I'm fine Iggy, Tally thought, shifting her weight and keeping her wings tight against her back out of a newfound habit. Why did she suddenly find herself with the almost completely obsessive compulsive disorder-y urge to hide her wings or shield them?
She blamed the economy. (Or was it ecology?)
If it wasn't for the economy, or greedy people for that matter, people wouldn't want to shoot her dead just for her wings, or rather for the money that came from it. Wasn't there a Disney movie about that? Dr. Seuss something's Christmas special…whatever.
"You are not," Iggy muttered, running his hands over her face to check for any other injuries, light as a feather.
They had found them wandering around the edge of a forests, about to take off running when they spotted some suspicious characters.
Luckily, Angel had controlled them to the spot, creeping all three of them out.
"Jeez, Angel," Gazzy complained, somehow thinking along the same lines as Talon. "Please don't do that again. That was so weird…"
Tally nodded only for her head to be turned by her chinny-chin-chin to face Iggy again as he continued his inspection. Iggy, I am fine. Quit being such a worry-wart.
"Liar," he grumbled, rubbing his finger beneath her bangs where she had a large gash. She flinched a bit and looked away from his piercing eyes when he aimed a glare at her, as if to say "And you were saying?"
Dang, he was getting good at speaking without words…(Oh no, did that mean they were turning into some weird alternate version of Max and Fang? UGH! No! Anything but that!
Head wound. It's fine.
"You have a limp," he said frowning.
Tally rolled her eyes, And you have a nasty looking bruise. We all have war wounds, duh.
But Iggy didn't really listen he was already getting some Peroxide from the first aide kit and brushing his hand over other things to figure out what the things were. (The little actions that forced her to remember that he was blind.)
Sighing, Tally let him fret over her. It wasn't as if she didn't positively baby him when it came to helping him out or anything.
"What's are next order of business, Captain Max?" Total asked, big black Scottie eyes staring up at her.
"…we get to the Facility," she said in that spacey way that meant she was either making up a plan or talking to the Voice at the same time.
Just as she was about to wrench away from Iggy, Tally felt a wave of exhaustion tackle her and nearly slumped onto her boyfriend's torso like some whimp. Glancing at her brother when she heard a twig snap under his foot, noting the way he discreetly brushed his hand against his chest then looked at his hand like it was some weird limb.
She gave her own hand a good hard look while Iggy tended to her forehead like the dedicated man-nurse he was.
She had actually managed to get through the Goblin's transparent ability to clock it. Had her brother as well?
Was this a side effect of the serum that had been torturing them for what seemed like ages but was really only a span of a week?
And most importantly, were they going to turn into some sort of…Goblin Hybrid?
The thought made goose bumps rise on Tally's skin.
She didn't want to look like those things.
No red eyes, no inky skin…no!
"Okay then," Max said, harshly yanking Tally out of her panicked thoughts. "Here's the plan. We're going to have to sneak in, and for that we'll have Fang—since you've been practicing moving with your power—and we have Nudge to hack into the computer, Iggy can pick any locks on the way there, get the info, get out and then you Pyros can have a bombfest."
"And after that?" Fang asked slowly.
Max frowned, her brows meeting together. "Then we either destroy the rest of the placed by ourselves or we figure out how to get people back on our side…"
"Sounds reasonable," Iggy said, pushing Tally lightly so that she would sit down on the stump behind her.
She rolled her eyes; he really was going overboard with the whole concerned boyfriend thing.
Iggy jerked upward at the same time that Angel took a frantic glance into the woods they were in.
Max pulled Gazzy to his feet while Tally stumbled up, everyone straining their ears to try and hear whatever hellish noise Iggy had heard.
The lack of thunder-like sounds assured the twins that it wasn't Goblins but the clumsy tromping and poorly hidden whispers did tell them who they were.
"Bounty Hunters…" Nudge muttered jumping to her feet, Max firmly pushing her to lead Gazzy and Angel out.
Talon handed Total to her, then picked up her pack as quiet as she could.
"Bandada, bezheet!" Max's whispered urgently.
Confusion clouded her mind at the strange words before everyone took off running, and then she sprinted behind them, well aware of the jubilant exclamations following them, the more clumsy running and then—
BANG! BANG!
"U and A ASAP!" Max called, ducking her head and narrowly missing a bullet to the head, a few strands flying to the floor almost in slow motion as she leapt over a log flawlessly.
Talon's heart was beating wildly as she saw Iggy get slashed by a stray bullet, getting no reaction from him.
I see a clearing! Turn at one o' clock and in five Mississippi's!
Max put the brakes on and turned around wicked fast as Tally, Nudge and Angel stopped with her as well.
The older three threw their hands out, causing some of the Bounty Hunters to freeze, some of them to go flying back and the bullets to embed themselves in trees while Angel made a ton of them turn around and plain leave.
When they were satisfied, they snapped their wings open and jumped into the air where the boys were all circling at a safe distance.
"You girls are scary," the Gasman said.
Tally snorted, I don't know whether to say 'and bombs and cults aren't' or take it as a compliment.
Iggy flashed a grin, "You can't see anything, remember Tally?"
Almost as if the inch-within-her-death situation hadn't happened, Tally rounded on Iggy and whacked him with her wing. That was a low blow you dirty bas—
"Language," he said easily, still grinning, despite the blood dripping from the slice on his arm.
You curse all the time you bonehead!
"Name calling isn't nice."
Tally rolled the sleeve of her wind breaker up, flexing her hands, I'll show you nice.
-
I had convinced Fang to not turn on the laptop tonight, as we watched the kids sleep and Iggy's lips barely move and Tally's subconscious hand gestures as they "talked." I have no idea what they usually talked about, all I knew was that it usually ended up with either Tally hitting him in some way or in a very mushy position.
Not that I could complain about that.
One, that meant Tally kept Iggy (and by default Gazzy) out of our hair (Mine, specifically. Meaning no pranks from the oversized, four-year old.) and two, I'd be a hypocrite since I was participating in mushy stuff of my own kind.
Though not right now, in plain sight of Tally and Iggy—"Ow! Dang it, I didn't mean anything by it!"—who would no doubt tease us till we combusted from all the unnecessary attention.
We were sitting in a relatively companionable silence, just content watching the flock sleep (with the exception of the tall were-squabbling-a-second-ago-but-were-now-in-a-very-close-hug yin-yang couple across from us.).
And as I had said on multiple occasions; silence is not a good thing for me in many ways.
It causes me to just mosey on over to my more paranoid thoughts, not to mention have to remind my self of the list of things I need to go over in order to, you know, survive.
And the serum.
And there is always that little nifty Voice of mine that pops in whenever the heck it wants instead of when I really need it.
Yet, having a good portion of the world after us (a big jump from the tiny Science Club called Itex, apparently) had matured me even more. So instead of completely blowing it off or telling it to take a hike, I decided to humor it.
And by that, you mean what? The GH05T serum? Aren't Fang and Talon over that?
No.
"What?" I asked aloud by accident, head whipping around to give the Stoic Twins icy glares.
Fang just shrugged it off, giving me his own "What's wrong now?" look while Tally did her little freak out thing and ducked her head into Iggy's shoulder, like the guilty party she was.
The Stoic Twins, as you call them, haven't recovered completely from the serum. They just don't talk to anyone but themselves about it. Go ahead and ask them what they have been worrying about.
"You've been hoping heads or something?" I asked, reverting to my scathing remarks, letting the sarcasm drip from the words like acid.
Fang cocked an eyebrow while it said No.
"Fine then," I muttered, then louder; "The voice says you guys have been hiding symptoms. Explain. Now."
Talon jumped up from where she was, swaying a bit, before trying to stride over to her twin.
She forcefully yanked him closer to her and started a mini conversation with him.
"Should I assume they're talking to each other?" Iggy asked, his face twisted in annoyance. "Or is it some twincest?"
I muttered under my breath, "Sexist revolting pig." Fang chucked a rock at him (and a dirty look that he didn't see) while I guess Tally "told him" a few choice words then jumped back into her gesticulations.
"Are you guys going to share anytime soon?" I asked after a few minutes.
Fang turned and gave me this weird look with his black eyes and then gave a curt nod. "Yeah, just comparing stories. We can hit Goblins. On occasion."
"Awesome," I mumbled, mentally adding that to a list of "pros" to that dumb serum. "What else?"
"The usual burning. Nothing much."
He said it so casually.
Maximum, where do you think new Goblins are coming from?
"How should I know?"
Think, Maximum. The School customarily kidnapped kids for experiments. So to make Goblins the Facility would have had to…
"They're kidnapping kids for experiments?!"
-
Facility, Spain, 1500 Hours
All over the world, at the very moment that Maximum Ride and the older flock members discussed the new revelation, children were being stolen from their homes, beds, recruited straight out of school for "Scholar's Achievement Association" and all being shipped to former Itex buildings, School buildings and the Institute for Higher Living.
That is, after it had all been acquired by Kravtsov.
How did she come up with the grafting of Goblin traits into normal homo sapiens sapiens?
Simple.
The obsolete Erasers that they kept around mainly for study had been the key to her idea.
More specifically, the files Jeb Batchelder had left behind on his son and Eraser, Ari Batchelder.
Consequentially, the deceased half-brother to the leader of the famous "Flock;" the very flock that held the one experiment she had overseen for fourteen years.
Aforementioned file provided her with plenty of information on the grafting of DNA and traits into already aged humans.
Which was the base for her experiments on human children into Goblins.
The first Goblin Prototypes were merely a amalgamation of many animals, producing a very ferocious creature, which had to be promptly euthanized after it attacked and killed one of Kravtsov's whitecoats. That is, after they had produced the first tracking Goblins, mouths stitched shut to prevent the death of any others.
And that was precisely how she had managed to corral the flock into a certain area and capture her experiment and the other that was meant to be hers as well, but Batchelder had snatched out from under her.
She tested out the serum on the twins, taking a blood sample and observing the way the blood cells mutated, all while forcing them to fight against Battle Goblins, the more ferocious of the "species."
But, when they were wisped away by the others in the flock, she had to resort to something else.
She had wanted two undefeatable spies and combatants.
Her hypothesis was that if she injected the GH05T serum, the new and improved one, then she would have the perfect weapons in which to manipulate the world leaders to her will.
But, due to the fact that Avian-Homo Sapiens Sapiens hybrids tended to be immune to many things (an affect of the former and also obsolete School's asinine tests), the serum was winding it's way through their systems slowly.
So she turned to kidnapping kids.
Those that were arrested for "Pro-flock" meetings, whom had crossed a certain line drawn by any specific towns, were immediately sent to a certain building from which they were drugged then sent to the nearest Facility. Where they would be prepped for hybridization.
Kravtsov gave a wide, unsettling smile.
She didn't have Batchelder to interfere in her experiments anymore; he wouldn't poison her experiments mind, or cause her to screw up on any surgery.
And no one would know that she was kidnapping the kids, since it paled in comparison to the world wide search for the seven flying children and dog she had caused.
She took a sip of her coffee and looked at her computer screen, muttering in Russian, "Life is good."