Disclaimer: Maximum Ride does not belong to me, though all OC's, original ideas, and plot devices do.
Merry late Christmas, everyone! And, ah, if you don't celebrate Christmas...err, good evening, had a lovely day, I expect? :P
Hugs and kisses (or not) to AmyQueen95, pandorad24, nathan-p, Setari, flYegurl, chulala, Aleria14, Storm-Horse101, Alactricity, huntermarra and BeTrueToThyself for reviewing, because you guys pushed us past 300 reviews! -confetti- I honestly never thought I would ever reach this point, and maybe it's not much compared to those people who have more than 1000 reviews (I have no idea how they do it) but I am infinitely grateful to you guys, to all my reviewers. -more confetti-
I think we should have about thirty chapters in total, so there can only be about five chapters, more or less, to go. We're almost there, guys! Hang in there! :D
This chapter is almost entirely Ari-POV, with a Fang-POV to close the chapter. Enjoy!
Chapter Twenty-Five: Enemies in the Dark
"I have a plan."
Ari looked up from slinging his backpack over his thick shoulders. His heart jumped in his chest with fiery adrenaline. Jeb had been prepared for this moment, this ambush, ever since they had first settled into the safe house. He'd given them each a backpack full of supplies necessary for surviving on the road—water, food, a blanket and a knife for self-defense. They were ready.
We've got to get out of here.
"What plan?" Jeb asked. He stood between Ari and Jacob, his dark eyes focused on Iggy and the bulky bundle he carried in his skinny arms. "Iggy…what is that?"
Iggy grinned at Jeb's wary tone. "You didn't think I spent almost a week just sitting around, did you? I knew something like this would probably happen, so I came prepared."
His fingers fumbled with the strings of the bag he carried. In the dim light of the hallway, Ari caught only a glimpse of red and yellow wires before the blind boy pulled from the sack four metal boxes.
"They're nothing huge," Iggy said, "but they should deliver a good kick."
Just then, Max and Gazzy came running from the young boy's bedroom. Max rested a hand on the small boy's back as he adjusted the straps of his emergency pack.
"We're ready," the Gasman announced breathlessly. Max nodded. Ari almost blinked at the wave of déjà vu that swept over him upon seeing the look in her eye. Those brown orbs were gleaming with a steely determination that he had always viewed from afar as Max fought to defend everything and everyone she held dear against the dangers of the world. Suddenly, he was very, very glad that he wasn't on the receiving end of her antagonism…for once.
"What's going on?" Max demanded, seeing the bombs in Iggy's hands. "Ig?"
"I think I know what we're gonna do," the blind boy replied.
"Well, you better do it fast. The Erasers should be here any second now."
Iggy nodded firmly. "We're gonna have to split up. Jeb, Jacob, Ari, all you guys without wings, climb down and hide in the trees. Wait for us. We'll let down the ladder, and the Erasers will climb up to see if anyone's inside. The second they're all in the house, we tie the bombs to the house's support beams and set 'em off. Each bomb counts down a little less than thirty seconds before it blows."
"You have four bombs," Ari said quietly, noticing a gap in Iggy's plan. "If you, Max and Gazzy set the bombs, one of them will go off after the other ones."
Max agreed, "We need a fourth person."
"I'll do it," Ari said instantly, seeing that Jeb was about to volunteer himself. "Dad, you and Jacob hide in the shadows and keep the trigger safe."
Jeb looked as if he wanted to protest, but after a moment of hesitation he nodded, his ingrained sense of duty kicking in. One of his hands unconsciously strayed toward his backpack, where Ari had seen him put the Extermination trigger.
Max smiled hungrily. "Then let's go get 'em."
By the time Ari climbed down the folding ladder and set foot on the leafy ground, he could clearly see the beams from the Erasers' flashlights cutting through the lightless dark of the night. He had time only for one worried glance, but he counted at least ten beams of light, already frighteningly close.
"Ari!"
The young Eraser turned at Iggy's hushed whisper. A bomb was outstretched in the blind boy's hand. "Just press the big button when they're all inside. Then run. They're not huge bombs, but they'll definitely knock you off your feet if you're too close."
"Iggy, Ari, move!" Max hissed from the shadows of the trees. By her side, the Gasman stared with wide, excited eyes at the approaching lights, one of Iggy's bombs clutched nervously in his grubby hands.
"Coming!" Iggy grabbed tightly onto Ari's sleeve. The young Eraser took off toward the safety of the trees, crouching low as he tried to make his footsteps as quiet as possible. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of a white shirt as Jeb and Jacob fled into the trees behind the safe house.
Ari slipped through the trees until he found an ancient-looking specimen with a hollowed-out interior large enough to hide Iggy. He helped the blind boy into the hiding spot before crouching down behind the carcass of a huge redwood that lay nearby.
"How far are they?" Iggy whispered.
Still holding tightly (but not too tightly) to the bomb Iggy had given him, Ari lifted his head over the log to peer into the clearing that surrounded the safe house. He looked just in time to see the first Eraser break through the trees. The wolf-mutant howled triumphantly at the sight of the safe house, filled with warm light and the promise of tasty bird kids.
"They're here," Ari replied grimly.
A branch snapped nearby. Ari spun to see Max and Gazzy hiding a short distance away, huddled behind a thick row of bushes. In the faint moonlight, their hair gleamed like gold—they looked like angels. Grimy angels preparing to blast a bunch of wolf-mutants to high heaven.
Max turned her head and met Ari's eye. The breath stopped in his chest as something wary crossed her face, but after a half-second of uncertainty, she thinned her lips and nodded respectfully. Ari relaxed and nodded back.
"Look what we have here!"
A shout from the leading Eraser drew Ari's attention away from Max and Gazzy. All of the wolf-mutants had filed into the clearing and stood gathered around their leader, bristling with bared fangs and loaded pistols. In total, they numbered fifteen.
The lead Eraser, a narrow-boned creature with white-blond hair and pitted skin tinted a strange greenish hue, took a step forward and hefted his shotgun in his hands. Ari thought he recognized the mutant from Stark's School—Nero. Ari had heard about him and his strange appearance, a result of too many chemical experiments from the whitecoats. There were no words for how glad he was not to be working for those people anymore.
"Nine of you go up," Nero ordered with a jerk of his shotgun. "The rest of you stay down here with me. Wait for the pipsqueaks if they try 'n run."
Ari watched with a sinking heart as six Erasers remained behind while their squad-mates, one by one, ascended the ladder to the safe house. He exchanged a nervous glance with Max. If the Erasers stayed behind, there was no way he and the others would be able to set up the bombs without being shot at.
The last Eraser filed into the safe house. Ari swallowed tightly and rose into a half-crouch, his heart thumping madly in his chest. He would have to draw their fire. It was the only way.
"Ari?" Iggy hissed, hearing the young Eraser move. His sightless eyes were bright in the shadows of the hollowed tree. "What are you doing?"
Ari looked away, steeling himself. But before he could run out into the clearing, a shout rose up from the trees behind the safe house.
"Hey!"
Ari jumped—that was Jacob's voice. Nero nodded curtly to his men and led them around the safe house, toward the trees where Jeb and Jacob were hiding.
Max leaped to her feet and made for the house, barking, "Crap! Go, go! Now!"
Ari lunged to grab Iggy's wrist and led the boy toward one of the house's support beams. "Here," he said quietly, guiding Iggy's hands to the base of the beam. "Just set it against this and press the button."
Iggy nodded. Ari hurried over to his own support beam and propped the bomb against its base. His finger hovered over the button that would set the bomb off. The seconds before Iggy's order seemed to stretch into minutes, hours. Sweat trickled into his eyes as he stared nervously into the shadows of the trees at the edge of the clearing.
"Oy!" Someone shouted from the safe house. "Nero, there ain't no bird freaks up here!"
"Now!" Iggy yelled.
Ari pressed the button and shot to his feet. Moving faster than he ever remembered moving before, he ran to Iggy's side, grabbed the back of the boy's shirt and sprinted the distance to the tree-line.
"Got 'em!" An Eraser shouted from the safe house. An instant later gunfire punctured the dirt behind Ari's heels. He and Iggy barely made it into the shadows before the Eraser that had noticed them alerted the others.
"Keep running!" Ari shouted, pulling on Iggy's shirt. He hadn't seen Max or Gazzy get away from the safe house after setting of their bombs, but he could only hope that they hadn't been hit by the Erasers' bullets.
"Wait, Ari!" Iggy called out. Ari never got to find out what the boy was going to say. One moment he and Iggy were running so quickly they were nearly tripping over their own feet, and the next moment, something roared and crashed into them like a freight train.
Ari rammed into a tree and landed hard on the ground. He barely had time to blink before an Eraser launched itself on top of him and wrapped its meaty hands around his neck.
"Ari!" Iggy screamed.
There was a sudden flash of light. Ari squinted against the blaze as four explosions joined into one monstrous, thundering detonation that sent a shockwave shuddering through the air. The Eraser flew off of him, tossed loose by a combination of the shockwave and the impact of Iggy's shoe against his temple. Ari lurched into a sitting position just in time to see the safe house collapse on itself. The air was rife with the trapped Erasers' screams, then the sound of shattering wood as the house toppled to the ground, and finally a silence broken only by the crackle of the explosion's leftover flames.
Ari rolled to his feet, rubbing his throbbing throat. Iggy delivered another forceful kick to the Eraser's head, and the mutant went limp.
There was no time for thanks. Three Erasers burst through the trees and advanced, their pistols trained on Iggy and Ari. One of them was Nero.
"Get 'em, boys!" Nero grinned.
One Eraser lunged at Iggy, the other two at Ari. He hesitated, not wanting to leave his blind friend on his own, but Nero lifted his shotgun and fired off a shot by Ari's ear. The young Eraser flinched and shouted to Iggy, "Get out of here! Fly!"
The blind boy spun on his heel and scrambled off into the shadows, an Eraser close on his heels.
Ari ran. Behind him, the Erasers yowled with bloodlust and half-insane laughter. He could hear their bones crunch as they morphed, turning into creatures that ran on all fours and would tear him apart with their fangs if they caught him.
His feet flew over the ground. Black shadows and half-silver moonlight flew by in blurred snatches as he fled. His heartbeat was a frantic death knell, ringing in his ears. Ari kept an eye out as he ran for a flash of blond hair or a white shirt, for any sign of his friends or father.
The Erasers jeered at him through twisted muzzles. "Run, run little traitor! We've got you-uuu!"
Directly ahead of him, a small figure with yellow hair leaped into his path. Gazzy! Ari grabbed the boy's arm, scaring him half out of his wits, and kept running.
"Where's Max?" he demanded. The blond-haired girl was nowhere in sight.
Gazzy's dirt-streaked face contorted. His short legs struggled to keep up with Ari's frantic pace. "We got separated. Some of the Erasers got out of the house before it went down and they chased us apart. We gotta keep moving, one of them's right behind me—"
A vicious snarl was the only warning they had before the two fully-morphed Erasers were upon them. Both mutants slammed into Ari, knocking him flat on his back. Nero ground his knees into the young Eraser's chest, grinning excitedly as the motion elicited a sharp cry of pain. With a roar, a third Eraser tore out of the trees, tackled Gazzy to the ground and pinned his small wrists behind his back.
"Careful with that one, Otto," Nero warned the third Eraser. "Stark wants him alive and bite-mark-free."
The Eraser named Otto sneered and forced Gazzy's face into the dirt. "Want me to take him to the car? He should fit in the trunk."
"Sure," Nero said. He paused and grinned spitefully in Ari's face. "But…not yet. Keep him here for a second. Let 'im enjoy the show."
Otto released his hold on Gazzy's head, letting him up so he could breathe. Gazzy gasped, "Darnit, let go of us, you rotten creeps! Or Ari will beat the stuffing out of ya!"
The boy's captor stuffed his fingers into Gazzy's mouth to keep him quiet. Fury flickered in the Gasman's eyes, and a moment later Otto jerked his hand away, yelling as blood welled around the bite-marks Gazzy had left on his fingers.
"Freak!" The Eraser dealt a hard cuff to the side of Gazzy's head. "Just try that again—maybe Stark doesn't want us chewing on you, but he didn't say squat about a couple broken fingers."
Something in Ari's chest exploded in heat. He had never really cared about Gazzy one way or another, but after the past week he guessed the boy was okay, and he wasn't about to stand by as a helpless kid was beaten around by merciless mutants three times his size.
"Don't touch him!" he barked, getting gingerly to his feet. Otto snarled and started to move forward, but a single, sharp gesture from Nero stopped him where he was. Ari glared at the lead Eraser with all the malevolence he could muster.
"Word around the School," Nero said with a sneer, "is that you're due to croak any day now. Tell us, kiddo. Organs shutting down yet? Muscles giving out? Or do you just fall over one day and stop twitchin'?"
The other Erasers laughed raucously. Ari gritted his teeth, but kept his jaw strong. Nero narrowed his eyes.
"Don't," he said, stepping so close that Ari could smell his rancid breath, "try to play tough, traitor. You deserve this. From what I've heard, you've been a stuck-up little prick for as long as anyone can remember because your daddy's a whitecoat. Well, what now, brat? Where's Daddy now?"
Ari put his hand on Nero's face and pushed the Eraser away from him. Nero staggered back, catching himself against his partner as he leveled at Ari a glare so filled with rage that a nervous shudder went down his back.
"Kane," Nero said to the Eraser next to him, "I don't think he's being very polite. Do you?"
"Nope," Kane said with a smirk. "Should we teach him some manners? As a farewell gift?"
"I think we should."
Ari managed to block the first few blows, but Kane followed up with a crushing kick that had him wheezing on his knees. Instantly, both Erasers set into him with their fists. Red-hot pain erupted in Ari's sides as the blows came raining down from all sides. He lashed out with both feet and caught Nero in the forehead.
The Erasers instantly backed off. Nero cursed, holding a thick paw to his wounded forehead where the edge of Ari's shoe had hit hard enough to break skin. Ari staggered to his feet, panting, clutching at his bruised sides with hands that trembled with pain. His stomach dropped when Nero reached into his pocket and took out a knife. The weapon shone dully in the moonlight, worn and stained with ancient blood.
"Little bastard," Nero snarled. "I'm gonna carve you up and deliver you to Stark personally. I think he'll like that."
"No!" Gazzy struggled in Otto's grip. The Eraser grunted and slammed the boy face-first into the dirt, holding him down with one gargantuan boot. Gazzy turned his head, spat out a clod of dirt and shouted, "Run, Ari! You jerks, leave him alone!"
Ari straightened his back painfully and glared Nero in the eye. The Eraser sneered. "Look at you," he spat disdainfully. "You're nothing but a useless, pathetic dead man. You hear me, little traitor? You're dead. Daddy can't save you from your expiration date. No one can."
Mere hours before, those hateful words would have sliced into Ari's very soul and crushed him. But now? Now he had hope. His father had given him hope, had showed it to him in the form of tangled wires and dull metal, and it had been beautiful.
"No."
Nero stopped, blinking. Ari lifted his chin and said again, louder this time, "No. I'll live. I'll survive this and live for a long time, become a grown-up and then an old man, and I'll have my friends and my dad. But you? Your expiration date will come eventually, and then guess what? No one will save you. No one will save you like they've saved me."
Nero's face twisted with maniacal hatred. "I'll kill you. I'll kill you. I don't care if you're gonna die anyway." He lunged forward, the knife flashing in his hand. "Come here, you stupid—"
Bam.
Everyone froze. Nero looked down at his chest with wide, confused eyes. A puddle of red spread across his white-blond fur and burbled at the corners of his mouth. With a gurgling groan, he folded at the knees and toppled over. Behind his collapsed form stood two familiar figures.
"Dad," Ari breathed. "Max."
Jeb held a rifle in his shaking hands, his eyes wide behind his glasses and his mouth halfway open with shock, as if he couldn't believe his finger had pulled the trigger. Max looked the same, sans stolen weapon.
"You didn't really have to shoot the guy," she said. "I could've taken him out."
Jeb ignored her comment and slowly turned the rifle on Kane. "On the ground," he said, his voice still husky with shock. "Now. And you, let go of the boy."
Both Kane and Otto lifted their hands above their heads, their eyes trained on the weapon Jeb held in his hands. The ex-whitecoat waited until both Erasers were spread flat on the leaves before he nodded jerkily to Ari and Max.
"Ari, Max. If you would."
Simultaneously, two sets of superhumanly-strong fists, one from a winged girl and the other from an Eraser-defector, came down on the backs of the Erasers' necks. The wolf-mutants went limp immediately.
From his spot on the ground, Gazzy stuck out his tongue and rubbed it furiously with one dirty hand. "Euggh. I'm gonna have that Eraser taste in my mouth for weeks."
"Iggy?" Ari asked, searching behind Max and his father for some sign of his blind friend. "And Jacob?"
Max shook her head hastily. "No idea where they are. We were separated. Come on, we have to move," she said, grabbing Gazzy and nearly dragging him to his feet. "Someone must've heard that gunshot."
Sure enough, a howl sounded so close that the hair on the back of Ari's neck stood up. As a group, the four of them turned and raced into the trees as the sound of thundering footsteps rose around them like a cloud of locusts.
They only could have been running for a minute when an explosion sounded in the near distance. Ari came to a juddering stop with the rest of the group, his eyes straining to see in the darkness. A cloud of smoke rose to obscure the crescent moon, at its base a flickering collection of flames that spat sparks in every direction. Above the roar of the fire, Erasers screamed orders at each other as they scurried to regain order amongst their thinning ranks.
"Well," Max said with a huff, "I think we found Iggy."
"Look!" Gazzy pointed toward the site of the explosion. "Is that them?"
Ari squinted. Even with his enhanced sight, he doubted he would have been able to pick out the two fleeing figures without the aid of the blazing flames. With the orange-red glow of the fire behind them, it was easy to recognize Iggy and Jacob as they bolted from the scene of the crime.
"All right." His eyes still trained on Iggy's and Jacob's approaching forms, Jeb reached his hands out to grip Ari's and Max's elbows. "We have to find a place to hide."
Max shot him a disbelieving look. "Hide?"
"Yes, Maximum. We can't fight them. They're armed and we are not." Jeb looked around frantically for a hiding spot. It wasn't until then that Ari noticed they were at the same stream he and the others had visited only yesterday, though they had played at a site where the stream wasn't bordered by miniature cliffs on either side like this spot was. A large boulder rose out of one cliff side's edge and formed a long ledge. Jeb walked toward it and beckoned them forward.
"Here," he said, pointing. "All of you, get under the ledge. And keep quiet."
One by one, the group members dropped over the edge, splashing through the stream to crouch below the rock ledge. Ari pressed his back against the wall, trying to quiet the ragged, tired gasps that tore themselves from his throat. His ribs ached from the beating they had taken not five minutes earlier.
"You all right?" Max asked. He turned to find her watching him with worried brown eyes.
"Yeah," he rumbled, holding a hand to his side. "They gave me a good beating, that's all."
Max narrowed her eyes, looking as if she wished she'd dealt the Erasers more than a blow to the neck. Still above the ledge, Jeb hissed, "Iggy, Jacob, here!"
A moment later, Jeb and the group's missing members dropped into the stream. The air rushed from Ari's chest with relief, though Iggy's face was smeared with mud and soot, and Jacob was coughing up a storm.
"Too much smoke," the dark-skinned man choked out. "Sorry…"
"Shh." Jeb held out a hand and cocked his head to the left, listening. Ari strained his ears. With all the grace of stampeding elephants, the remaining Erasers were crashing across the terrain in search of the fugitives.
"They're coming. What do we do?" Gazzy whispered.
"Just…" Jeb squatted on the ground beneath the ledge and made himself small. "Keep quiet and wait."
They did. They waited until even the faintest sounds of the Erasers' pursuit had faded into the distance, waited until Ari's legs were cramped and all memory of warmth had left his aching body, until the moon seemed to lose some of its luster and left the world even darker than before. And still they waited.
Finally, just when Ari was sure he would explode from sheer boredom, Jeb straightened into a standing position. "All right," he said. "I think we've waited long enough."
The entire group let out one huge, relieved breath and spilled out from under the ledge and into the stream. Iggy bent over and dunked his head in the freezing water, scrubbing the mud and ash from his face and hair. Ari waded in and gave the boy a quizzical stare.
"What was that explosion?" he asked. Iggy coughed and ran a hand through his hair, sending water droplets flying.
"I found an extra bomb stashed in my backpack," he answered. "Forgot I had it there. But I usually keep a spare. I ran into Jacob after we got separated from the rest of you, and the Erasers were coming in on us from all sides, so I set off the bomb, and…kind of blew up their car."
Gazzy splashed his way over and complained, "I wish I could've seen that up close. It sounds like fun."
"Yeah, not so much," Iggy returned. "The Erasers caught us before we could get far enough, so the blast knocked me into the air. Jeez. I bet I'll smell like smoke till the end of the month."
"You guys," Max's voice called. Ari looked up to see the blond-haired girl standing back on top of the trench with Jeb and Jacob. She quirked an eyebrow at them and said, "Aren't you coming?"
Ari, Iggy and Gazzy clambered back up the trench to join the rest of their group. Jeb immediately turned on his heel and began to march in the direction Iggy and Jacob had been running before he intercepted them.
"What now?" Max asked, trotting to catch up to Jeb's side. "Jeb? Please tell me we have a plan."
Jeb turned his head toward her the slightest fraction. Ari knew that when his father angled his head like that, he was half listening and half formulating some concocted scheme to save himself. Only now, he had five other people to worry about.
"We can't stay here," Jeb said. "The Erasers will return with backup. I think that when Fang and the others left, the Erasers stationed in the surrounding area must have spotted them and searched for our hiding spot. If they can find us like that, they can definitely find us again. I have…one safe house left, in Maine. We'll go there."
Max stopped in her tracks so suddenly that Ari almost collided with her. "What about Fang?" she asked forcefully. "What about Nudge and Angel? If they come back, there's no way they'll find us."
"Serves them right for leaving us," Iggy muttered resentfully.
Max whirled on him with narrowed eyes. "Just so you know, Iggy, we think Fang was just faking that whole argument so we wouldn't follow him. He never meant any of it. He was just putting on a show to keep us away." She looked down at her feet, her eyes dark and filled with regret. "And it worked."
Ari saw Iggy's expression twist with surprise. He felt a certain measure of relief; if Fang-freak—err, if Fang hadn't really meant what he'd said to Iggy in their fight, then Ari hadn't been the reason the dark boy left and caused Iggy so much pain. It made him feel a little bit better about the whole situation.
"Max," Jeb sighed, "I know you don't want to leave Fang and the others behind. I don't either. But we can't stay here. The only weapons we have are a couple knives I got from the kitchen."
"I've got these," Max retorted, lifting her balled fists and shooting Jeb a look that said she'd like to use them on him.
Jeb only shook his head and turned his back on her. "You know those aren't enough against bullets. Come. We'll find a way to contact them, but now is not the time to wait."
The group moved silently after Jeb, their heads hung low as they left behind yet another home destroyed and lost. Ari struggled not to limp as he walked, but his feet slipped in the pine needle-covered ground, and he found himself wincing and gasping as random wires of pain shot through his bruised sides. He would be healed by morning thanks to his body's inhumanly quick healing rate, but at the moment his ribs felt like several of them had been bent neatly out of shape.
Iggy cocked his head at the uneven sound of Ari's steps and, with a concerned frown, wordlessly draped the Eraser's arm across his shoulders. Ari leaned on the smaller mutant as much as he dared to, thankful for the helpful gesture.
A small, grimy hand gripped his other arm and wrapped it around a set of equally diminutive shoulders. When Ari looked down, Gazzy's bright blue eyes stared back at him.
"Thanks for trying to protect me," the boy said. He went quiet and bit his lip, looking away. Ari was sure that Gazzy was more than aware of the tension between them because of their separate friendships with Iggy. But it seemed the eight-year-old was trying to reach out and make amends. "Are…are your ribs okay?"
Ari nodded his head slightly. "They'll heal."
"Okay," said Gazzy. "Uh…good."
Ari didn't miss the way Iggy's mouth turned up at the corners.
The group walked on and on in the forest, eventually coming out into a plain that they risked dashing through to save time. By the time Jeb sagged against a tree and called for a break, pale light was already breaking over the top of the horizon, making the land glow new and bright.
"Thank God," Iggy said. He found a spot on the ground and curled up as if it was a four-poster bed with a heating system built in. "I thought I was gonna keel over."
"Me too," Gazzy agreed with a pained groan. The eight-year-old sat heavily next to his blind friend and rested his chin on his hands with a tired huff. "Can we sleep now?"
Ari's father chuckled, though it came out more as a bone-weary, explosive sigh than anything else. Again, Ari was reminded that his father, though smart and sneaky, wasn't invincible. He didn't even have the stamina that Max or any of the other mutants had, which explained why he simply plopped onto the ground instead of sitting down like a normal person.
"Yes," Jeb murmured, his eyelids already fluttering into sleep. "We may sleep now."
Thinking, Ari made his way over to his father, skirting around Jacob's prone figure (the exhausted man had already made a nice spot for himself beneath a tree and was halfway asleep) and Max. The golden-haired girl stared into the distance, toward the brilliant sunrise. Pale, half-white, half-yellow light highlighted her haggard features.
Ari looked away. He still loved Max so much it hurt. The last week, despite the expiration date that hung over him like a roiling cloud of plague, had been one of the best of his life. Max had acted as if she actually liked him. She'd been nice to him, had even taught him a few things when he looked confused about something she said. Just like the big sister he always wanted her to be.
Yet he couldn't help being afraid that it would all end soon. Good things usually didn't last very long. Not in his life.
But…maybe, this one will?
"Hey, Ari."
He looked up at Max's soft tone to find her giving him a weak smile. "How're your ribs?" she asked. "I saw Ig and Gazzy helping you earlier."
"They're better," Ari admitted. "I just…need some rest."
Max snorted and tossed her hair back. "Yeah, don't we all? You look really tired, kid. Get some sleep. I'll take first watch."
Ari blinked in surprise and dipped his head thankfully. Then he turned back to his father, who still had his backpack on and was leaning against a tree. Jeb's eyes flickered open as he heard his son approach.
"Ari," he croaked hoarsely. "Is something the matter?"
Ari knelt at his father's side and worked his fingers under the straps of Jeb's backpack. "Oh," said Jeb, and sat up quickly. "The trigger…"
"It's fine." Ari breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the Extermination trigger still protected in the confines of the plastic case Jeb had stored it in. Holding the mess of wires and metal in his hands, he felt…light. Light and jittery and giddy. It was…a weird feeling, to say the least.
A weird falling called hope.
Jeb's fingers reached up and closed over Ari's own. Wide blue eyes met world-weary brown ones, and Jeb nodded.
"How do you feel?" Jeb asked.
Though he was exhausted beyond belief, his ribs felt like someone had driven over them with a tractor, and his days were numbered unless his father could pull off this miracle cure, Ari gave Jeb a wavering smile and said, "Great. I feel great."
"Something's up."
Scrunching his eyes against the blinding sunlight, Fang pressed himself flat against the snow, willing the whitecoats' eyes away from him and his ragtag flock. Not that those weak humans would have been able to see him clearly without binoculars, but he still didn't want to take any chances.
"What makes you say that?" Nudge asked in an uncharacteristically dry tone. "The whitecoats scurrying all over the place like they're on fire?"
Fang chose, wisely, to ignore Nudge's pointed barb. She still must have been upset with him over the whole theft incident that had taken place earlier in the day. What did she expect him to do? They'd needed snow gear—Angel had snatched only a thin sweater before they left, and Nudge didn't even have that. Unless they wanted to mug some unfortunate tourist in the street, there was no way for them to get what they needed except by stealing it from a store. Fang just prayed that their keep-your-heads-down trick had been enough to save them from the surveillance cameras.
Currently, though, they were safe from all manner of police and video cameras for the moment. All three of them were lying flat on their stomachs, protected from the cold by the thick snow jackets they had "borrowed." Stationed high on top of the mountain next to the one that housed Stark's School, they were basically protected from raving scientists and insane wolf-mutants with guns.
Basically.
The fact that the School seemed to be descending into chaos did something to reassure the three winged children that they were safe for the moment.
"Look, they're leaving!" Angel cried. Fang followed her pointing finger to the open doors of some sort of docking bay as one, two, three helicopters lifted out and sped off into the distance. He narrowed his dark eyes.
"Gosh," said Nudge, temporarily appearing to forget her beef with Fang. "I wonder what could be happening…maybe they're sending out more Erasers to look for the rest of the flock?"
Fang squinted his eyes, straining to see across the long distance. Even with his enhanced sight, it was difficult to pick out the Erasers from the whitecoats as they scurried about on the School's flat roof and inside the huge docking bay. "No," he said, finally making out the different figures. "Those are whitecoats getting into the helicopters. Most of the Erasers are staying behind."
As he spoke, Fang noticed five dark forms flying in from the direction the other helicopters had taken. He watched as four of the helicopters went into the docking bay and one went up to land on the School's roof. Erasers poured out, and as soon as they had gone, whitecoats took their place. Four of the scientist-laden helicopters rose and thrummed away from the School at top speed. The one on the roof stayed behind as a group of whitecoats milled around it.
Fang snapped out his wings with a grim frown. "Let's go. This is bad; they're bringing the Erasers back in, not sending more out. We're going to see what they're up to."
Nudge and Angel followed him without a word as he flew from one craggy mountain to the next. He flew as quickly and quietly as he could, though something told him he could have made cawing noises and flapped as noisily as he liked, and still no one would have noticed him. Not that he would ever caw.
A walled trench had been constructed between the School's roof and the mountain, presumably to keep the snow from crashing over the building in the event of an avalanche. Moving stealthily, the flock members maneuvered themselves into the trench and snuck down its length until they were behind the last helicopter. Fang could barely lift himself high enough to poke his head over the trench wall's edge.
Though it would have been ridiculously easy for the whitecoats to spot him had they been paying attention to the trench by their feet, Fang could see the final group of whitecoats to depart the School, could pick out the crates of files they had stored through the helicopter's open doorway, could detect the anxious expression on the pilot's face and the way his hands clenched and unclenched nervously over the controls.
Despite everything he could see, Fang had eyes for only one person.
Nehemiah Stark.
The sudden burst of hatred in his gut startled even him. Fang sank back into the safety of the trench, his heart pounding, his hair whipping around his face with the force of the rotor blades' wind. He'd seen Stark's picture in a file on the stolen laptop, had studied the cold face and dead-looking eyes until he thought his own orbs might fall out, but nothing prepared him for seeing the man in person. Nothing could have warned him about the sudden urge he had to leap over the side of the trench and wring the monster's neck.
"Fang?" Angel stared at him with frightened eyes. "What's wrong?"
Silently, he picked her up and lifted her until only her face from her eyes and above showed over the wall. "That man with the gray hair, talking to that tall black-haired guy," he said. Angel nodded attentively as he quickly lowered her back into hiding.
"That's Stark."
Angel's eyes went wide. Nudge blinked rapidly into the helicopter blades' wind. "What do we do?" she asked, pitching her voice low so the whitecoats wouldn't hear them.
A cold, oily voice speaking over the sound of the helicopter's engine stopped Fang before he could answer.
"Mr. Crane, you're sure the explosives are set correctly?"
Fang lifted himself the slightest bit over the wall. Stark was talking to the tall black-haired man, his expression flat and uninterested despite the edge to his tone.
"Yes, Doctor," Crane shouted back, "everything's set to blow. The School should go up in less than thirty minutes."
Stark nodded curtly and turned on his heel, preparing to board the helicopter. Fang froze. Stark was going to…blow up the School? He hadn't seen any mutants being lifted onto the helicopters, which meant they were still caged inside. Still caged and about to be blown halfway to hell and back.
"Fang?" Angel tugged anxiously on his sleeve. "What do we do?"
He didn't know. For a moment sound seemed to fade into the background and disappear, leaving Fang in the eye of an invisible storm. His instincts and need for vengeance roared at him to jump out of the trench and give Stark what he had coming to him. No one messed with Fang's family and got away with it. No one.
But…if he allowed himself to be distracted, he would lose precious time in the countdown until the School went up in flames. Until the trapped mutants went up in flames.
"Wait," Angel said, pulling hard on his sleeve. "Fang. This isn't the time. He deserves it, but it isn't time for him to pay yet. Please. That's not your job. That's not what you're meant to do. This, saving the mutants—that's what you have to do."
Fang felt like whirling on the girl and demanding what supernatural, freakish power gave her the right to tell him what he was and wasn't meant to do. But he knew she was right. So though it killed him inside, though he wanted nothing more than to beat Stark until he was unrecognizable and bloody, he hid in the trench until the helicopter doors slid shut and the machine rose into the sky, taking into safety that hated man and Fang's only chance at revenge.
"It's okay, Fang," Angel said once the helicopter was a safe distance away and the mountainside was quiet again. "I read Crane's mind. They're going to Headquarters in Germany. We know where to find them."
Fang kept his mouth tightly shut as he levered himself out of the trench and reached down to help Nudge and Angel. "Come on," he said roughly, setting off immediately toward a set of stairs that led from the roof to the lower levels of the School.
Maybe it wasn't his part to hand Stark his just desserts. But he was going to ruin the good doctor's heinous plans if it killed him.
A/N: End chapter twenty-five.
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-Kimsa