So. I feel accomplished because… I am now friends with Frenzied Warrior on Facebook! This means you're next Pandorad24. You should go do that now.
If anyone wants to know about the REAL Frenzied Warrior, her name is Samantha Peterwederspan, she is 41 years old, she lives in New York, and she's a dental hygienist. She also has a hunchback and weighs four hundred pounds. –kaching–
Iggy POV
I would have preferred not following my father as he led me down hallways that seemed to be littered with stuff like discarded needles, clip-boards, and the occasional body. Professor Jordan would step over them heedlessly, but I occasionally stumbled and had to stop and check that it wasn't anyone I knew. Maybe I was following a madman to probably eternal torture and captivity, but at least I could make sure my friends were safe and not dead on the ground.
I shook my head, because no, I wasn't letting myself be trapped this time. This time, I was getting rid of Professor Jordan so he couldn't hurt any more people.
The problem was that I was alone with him now, his back was to me, he had no reinforcements on the way, the Erasers were rebelling and taking care of the other scientists, and I still couldn't bring myself to do it.
Why? Why couldn't I just jump on him now? It would take about a second to break his neck. He wouldn't have time to take out his gun or anything. Then I'd be free.
So why?
"Subject 9," Professor Jordan said smoothly, "We're here."
He had stopped in front of a room that I remembered. The door slid open, and the gust of air blew in my face. I recognized the scent, and it brought back bad memories. I shuddered. Then I heard a sound from inside.
"There he is," an Eraser's voice growled, and I recognized it from the Cantine. The dark, luscious-voiced Eraser named Kenneth. "I have dearly missed our one-on-one time, creature."
"Go on," Professor Jordan said from behind me, and I stepped in almost unconsciously. I heard the door slide shut behind me as my father fallowed me inside.
The room was different. The air was less stifling. I could sense the absence of the chairs from before.
"What's going on?" I said, aware of how trapped I was. Professor Jordan grinned.
"You'll live here now," He said. "You can stay with Kenneth. He has so dearly missed your presence."
I didn't understand. I hadn't met the Eraser before today. But Kenneth laughed, and something about his voice made my head hurt.
J was still seething with hurt and anger just beneath my consciousness. I wondered if I'd have to live with him forever.
I took a deep breath. "The Erasers are out there fighting your scientists," I said. "You won't win. You'll be overtaken and killed in a matter of hours, maybe minutes."
Professor Jordan and Kenneth started laughing. I didn't see what was so funny about them dying.
"Oh Subject 9," He laughed, "Did you think me so unprepared as to not have a backup plan for such things as this?" I must have looked shocked, because Kenneth sneered and took a step toward me.
"This building is rigged," he informed me with his voice like acid. As he drew closer, my head continued to ache, as though something inside was pounding on my brain. "In a few minutes, a poisonous gas is going to be released into the School. Anyone exposed to it will die within, oh, seven minutes. And there are only a few safe rooms in the School… this is one of them."
I could feel the muscles in my back bunching up, as though my body was preparing itself to fly. But I couldn't, because I was trapped in the room from my nightmares with two big, scary people, both most likely armed.
"We just have to stay here for about twenty-four hours, until the remnants of the poison dissipate," Kenneth continued, getting closer. "So, we'll have plenty of time to… catch up."
He reached out and ran a clawed finger down my arm, but as it passed over my elbow it shrank into a normal, human finger that felt, somehow, very familiar.
My eyes widened in shock and it felt like my brain shattered in my skull. Memories were melting and reforming, and every nerve and impulse in my body screamed to get away.
What I did next, I think, surprised everyone, including me.
Instead of cowering in fear or bursting into tears, or standing there and letting him touch me, I lashed out at the Eraser with my fists clenched and punched.
Kenneth gasped in shock and stumbled back. I heard him double over and smelled blood dribble out of his mouth onto the floor. He growled through his shattered teeth and I heard him wipe blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand.
"You will pay for that, creature," he snarled at me, starting to stand up, but I kicked him before he could morph back into Eraser form and he fell to the ground, clutching at his neck, making strangled choking noises. I could feel him glaring at me in hate. "James," I heard him hiss at me, and my stomach did a backflip, and not the good, oh-my-gosh-I'm-making-out-with-my-girlfriend kind. James. Every time my real parents had called me that, I had cringed inwardly, and now I remembered why. It was his pet name for me, all those years ago, when I was too weak to fight back.
Not anymore.
I turned to Professor Jordan with my bruised knuckles bloody and prepared to fight, but before I could raise a hand against him, I heard something slam into the door.
Both of us froze. There was another sound, and I could hear the metal crumpling. Only one thing had that kind of strength.
There was another smash, and the door caved in. Heavy breathing greeted my ears, and I could have jumped for joy if I wasn't so shaken by what I'd just done.
It was Maximum Ride, high on adrenaline and ready to kick some ass.
Max POV
I stood, breathing heavily, and observed the scene before me. I had thought maybe I would be saving Iggy's butt, but it seemed as though he'd held pretty well on his own. He had sort of a wild look in his eyes, and his knuckles were battered. His hand where the Eraser's claw from the arena had pierced it was bleeding, but a huge Eraser lay gasping on the floor and Professor Jordan had an expression on his face that was the closest to fear I had ever seen it.
Iggy's face broke into a smile.
"Hey, Max," he said. Then he seemed to remember something and his expression turned from joy to panic. "Max, there's a poisonous gas that's about to be sprayed all over the School! We're going to die!"
I froze for a split second, and that was all it took for the tables to turn on us.
Professor Jordan saw my hesitation and immediately struck out at me, knocking my feet out from under me. He pulled a gun from his belt and aimed at my face. I thought I was going to die, but Iggy lunged at him and knocked his arm away. The two were knocked, unbalanced, out of the room and into the hallway. Professor Douchewazzle backhanded Iggy across the face, and Iggy was thrown to the side, clutching at his cheek.
As I collected myself, I screamed to Angel in my mind. Angel! There's a poisonous gas that's going to kill us all! You have to get out of here!
I struggled to my feet, scrambling for my own gun, which I had picked up off the dead Whitecoat. Before I could rise to help Iggy, a clawed hand grasped at my ankle, and I turned to see the Eraser that Iggy had taken down. The brute was growling, blood dripping down his chin. His eyes burned with a fiery hatred.
"The creature was mine," he snarled. "He's mine!"
Something about his voice made me think he didn't want Iggy to be his best friend, or even for bird-kid soup.
Angel hadn't responded to me. I wondered how long it would take for the gas to start spreading.
I heard a gasp of pain from out in the hallway and saw Iggy pinned under Professor Jordan with a blossoming black eye and the what-had-been-a-practically-healed-scar across his eye bleeding freely again.
The Eraser's claws dug into my ankle and I bit back a gasp of pain. I yanked my foot away from him, and in the brute's weakened state, he had to let go.
I immediately turned to attack Professor Jordan and get him off of Iggy, but apparently the Eraser wasn't as injured as I had thought. I heard him stand heavily behind me and turned to punch him, but he caught my fist in one huge paw. He breathed and droplets of his blood sprayed my face. I flinched, disgusted, and that was all he needed to take the advantage, twist my arm around and slam me, face down, to the floor. My gun skittered away, just out of reach of my outstretched arm. I was defenseless.
"All the way over here, fighting a losing battle," he whispered in my ear, hot breath hitting my cheek. "I figured you'd be comforting your boyfriend."
My cheeks heated with anger, and through red-tinted vision I saw Iggy striking at Professor Jordan and scrambling out from under him, spitting out some blood that had ran into his mouth from his eye.
"What did you do to Fang?" I grunted, and the Eraser twisted my arm further back, making my brain cloud with pain.
"I had him pinned to the ground, sort of like this," the Eraser muttered to me. "He was nearly in tears, terrified. I think some part of him must have remembered me to make him that scared."
I grimaced. "Ha, yeah right. Fang doesn't get scared."
The Eraser chuckled. "I don't know," he mused. "If you could have seen him when he was younger, before I trained him proper repression. The look in his eyes when I… well, he got very good at hiding it."
My heart thudded dully in my chest. Iggy, and Fang. How could this have happened without my knowledge? Fifteen years old, and I was just discovering my family. It was like my whole life had been a lie.
Iggy was on his hands and knees thirty feet away from Professor Jordan, who was raising his gun to aim at Iggy's bowed head.
"He was getting too strong and independent for his own good," the Eraser continued. His blood was falling in my hair. "I took care of that. Without his legs, he can go back to being the scared little boy I remember so fondly."
Without his legs. Scared little boy. Terrified.
My vision turned red and a furious buzzing filled my ears as I turned over and threw the Eraser off of my back and against the doorframe. Before he could react, I took his head in both hands and whacked it against the floor with all of my strength. His eyes rolled back into his skull and the brute lay still.
"Iggy!" I shouted, turning back to my brother as he struggled to catch his breath. He raised his head and I lunged a couple inches forward to the gun that had been knocked from my hands, taking it and sending it skidding across the tiled ground towards him. Iggy caught it and looked up towards Professor Jordan, blood running down his face and his colorless eye staring, white and determined, towards the man who had done so much.
Iggy stood and, turning the safety off, held the gun in front of him with both hands, pointing it at his father with shaking arms.
"I won't miss," he said, but his voice was weak.
Professor Jordan just smiled.
"But will you shoot?" he said simply. Iggy didn't move.
"Iggy, do it!" I yelled at him, but his eyebrows turned upward and his jaw twitched. He looked like he was about to cry. His eyes were wide and childlike. I could see reflected in them a little boy, still waiting for his dad to like him.
"You can stay here," Professor Jordan cajoled, his voice soft but his eyes cold as steel, and he hadn't lowered his gun. "You can stay in your room, and I'll bring my child to visit you. You can be her pet. She never has to know that you fathered her, so you'll never have to be a dad." Iggy's lower lip was trembling and his breathing was ragged. "I'll keep you on a leash," Professor Jordan cooed, and though his words were like venom Iggy appeared to be drinking them in as though it was what he wanted. "You can stay here forever."
But even though Iggy's expression was one of downright longing, he didn't lower his arms.
"I'm not your pet," he said, voice shaking. "I'm a person, and I have a family, and I'm not going to listen to you ever again."
Professor Jordan shrugged. "As you wish," he said, and I saw him prepare to fire the gun.
I screamed and acted on instinct, reaching out and grabbing the first thing my hand came into contact with – a walkie-talkie from the unconscious Eraser's belt – and hurled it with all my strength at Professor Jordan. It collided with his shoulder just as his finger closed on the trigger, and it threw off his aim. He grunted as the hard little object hit him, and the gun went off. And Iggy, with his sensitive ears and heightened battle reflexes, flinched and instinctively clamped his finger on his own trigger.
The bullet flew with a bang from his gun and embedded itself right between Professor Jordan's eyes.
Professor Jordan fell, lifeless, to the ground, and there was utter silence for several seconds. All the pain we had suffered, all the pain he had suffered his whole life. And the source of it all was gone.
Then Iggy screamed.
"No!" He dropped his gun and staggered forward, falling to his knees and crawling to Professor Jordan's side. I tried to get up but my ankle barely held my weight, so I crawled over to Iggy and tried to put my arm around his shoulders.
"Iggy, it's alright," I comforted, although I didn't see why I had to. Professor Jordan was evil, and now he was dead.
"D-d-dad!" Iggy sobbed. His hands moved to his father's face and open eyes and came away bloody. "Dad, I'm sorry, wake up, please, wake up, I'm so sorry…"
I tugged Iggy away from his dead father and clasped either side of his face with my hands, staring into his eyes. I wiped blood from his cheek with my thumb.
"Iggy," I said, "Don't. You're free from him now."
"I didn't mean to!" he gasped, seeming to choke on every breath.
"He would have killed you," I told him firmly, but Iggy didn't seem to hear. It was like he had loved Professor Jordan, somehow. I hated to think it, but from the despair in Iggy's eyes, it seemed true. I hesitated, unsure of how to comfort him, but then I remembered something.
"You know," I said softly, running my fingers through Iggy's hair. "He… he had a picture of you, on his desk."
Iggy looked at me with disbelief, as though he could hardly dare to hope. I nodded at him.
There had been a picture of Strawberry Girl on his desk. Originally, I thought he was a sadist who liked child pornography. It had never occurred to me until just now, even after finding out that Iggy was Strawberry Girl, that maybe Professor Jordan had actually kept it because it was a picture of his son. Maybe deep down, Professor Jordan hadn't hated him as much as he had seemed to. Maybe he had even liked him a little.
Iggy took a shuddering breath, and then seemed to wilt, sagging forward into my arms.
"M-Max," he whispered, "What about the gas?"
I hesitated to tell him that Angel had yet to respond about it. I rubbed his back and chose my words carefully.
"Angel is taking care of it," I told him. "Don't worry."
There were a few moments of silence. Then Iggy sniffed.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I… I really wanted to… be a good dad."
I frowned. "What are you talking about? You can still be a good dad."
"Max…" Iggy raised his head to look at me, then coughed. His lips and teeth were stained red, and not from the blood from his eye. It had already clotted and the blood had been wiped away. With dread growing in the pit of my stomach, I looked down and saw dark red spreading across Iggy's shirt and pants.
Professor Jordan's aim had been knocked awry, but he hadn't missed. He hadn't hit Iggy's head. He had shot Iggy in the stomach.
"Oh god," I whispered. "Iggy, you're going to be fine. You're going to be fine."
Iggy laughed weakly. "You know I love you guys, right?" he asked. I felt my eyes burn with tears.
"Don't fall asleep on me now, big guy," I said hoarsely. "You have a baby girl, Iggy, did I mention that? A baby girl. You still need to name her."
Iggy shook his head and sighed. "I'd really like it if you just held me for a while, okay?" he murmured, and I immediately wrapped my arms around him and clutched him to my chest, my eyes searching frantically down the hall for any sign of life. I stroked Iggy's hair and desperately gulped for breath.
"Someone!" I screamed to the empty hall. "Anyone! Help!"
Nudge POV
When Angel got that pale, glazed look that I knew so well, I knew there was trouble.
"Angel, is it Max?" I asked her urgently. It took a few seconds for her to respond.
"It's Max," she said slowly. "She says… she says that there's poisonous gas, and it's going to kill everyone if we don't get out now."
"Holy cow!" Gazzy exclaimed. "Let's book it!"
"What about Iggy, and Max?" I pointed out.
"What about the other Erasers?" Anthony growled from his little corner.
"What about Fang?" Angel said.
Gazzy drooped. "What about us?"
We didn't have to worry about Fang for long, because that's when the doors to the room burst open to reveal a tall person who I assumed to be a human-form Buford and Fang, who had a grim, set expression and was sitting in one of those hospital wheelchairs and was wearing a new pair of pants. I tried not to notice his red-rimmed eyes, or how his legs were limp and unmoving.
"Buford!" Anthony exclaimed. "Do you know anything about a poisonous gas that's going to kill everyone in the School?"
Buford appeared not to be shaken by the immediate question and nodded simply.
"A security method," he said. "I thought this might happen."
"How can we stop it?" Angel asked him, and he looked at her approvingly.
"You can turn it off from the control room," he said smoothly. "You just need the password."
There was a moment of silence.
"Now would be a good time to have Iggy and his all-knowing power here with us," the Gasman said.
Fang didn't say anything.
"No," I said firmly. "I can do it. I'm good with computers."
Everyone stared at me.
"Hey!" I objected. "Iggy and Angel aren't the only ones with special powers, or have you forgotten?"
"You don't use them very often," Gazzy said.
I ignored him. "Someone just needs to take me to the control room, and I can do it, I promise," I said. Everyone spent a second looking at each other.
"I know where it is," Anthony offered quietly. I nodded to him.
"Okay," I said. "No time to waste."
I stepped over to Fang, who was having a staring contest with the floor. "Fang."
Fang turned his eyes to me, his expression still stony. "What?"
"Hold the baby," I said, and he looked shocked, noticing for the first time the baby-shaped bundle in my arms. I held the infant out to him, and he quickly opened his arms and drew her to his chest, staring at the little face in awe.
He brushed a corner of the towel away from her cheeks. "She… she has Iggy's eyes," he said. I nodded.
"You have to take care of her for him," I told him. "Don't let anything happen to her."
Fang set his jaw and looked back up at me, but this time his eyes were fixed and not glassy. He nodded.
"Okay," I told Anthony. "Lead the way."
Anthony and I raced through the corridors at top speed. He was a finger's length ahead of me, but even that was far enough. With my super reflexes, I could follow him as he turned corners on a dime and didn't pause or hesitate with direction. We didn't have time to waste. There were people to save.
We hardly passed anybody except for once, when we ran past three Erasers who seemed to be smooth-talking a Whitecoat into putting down his gun and joining the cause.
"Come on Billy," one of the Erasers said. "We've known you for ages, you're not all bad."
Anthony nodded to the three Erasers as he and I raced passed them, and they waved to him before returning to their persuading.
Anthony and I eventually reached a set of locked double-doors, which he banged into a few times before they broke enough for us to pry them open.
Inside was a room full of computers, floor to ceiling. I immediately rushed over to lay my hand across the monitors. I could feel the information flowing up my arm through my fingers.
"I need you to help me," I told Anthony.
"Okay," he said, looking nervous.
"And you need to turn human," I continued. "This requires a light touch, and fingers work a bit better than claws."
I stared at him until he sighed, and closed his eyes, starting to morph back into human form.
I turned back to the computers. "Go to that one," I said, gesturing to a computer a few feet away, "And type in the passcode '53H8701L4'."
I turned to see if he was doing as I told him, and saw a tall, handsome man in his twenties sheepishly typing on the keyboard. He turned towards me.
He seemed to be Middle-Eastern or something, with sort of gold-ish skin, blackish eyes and curly, dark hair. He was pretty.
"What came after '3'?" he asked, and I turned back to my own computer and relayed the passcode again.
We spent the next three minutes or so with my fingers flying over the keyboard and simultaneously giving him orders of things to click and passwords to type. After a little while, I sat back, flexing my fingers.
Anthony looked at me, breathing hard, as though all that typing had been some really strenuous physical labor. Or maybe he was still worn out from the run over here.
"Did we do it yet? Did we stop the gas?" he asked. I grinned at him.
"That? We did that a while ago."
Anthony furrowed his brows, confused. "Then… what have we been doing this whole time?"
"Well, my friend," I said, returning to the keyboard, having suitably stretched my fingers. "I've just been shutting down all scientific machines besides medical equipment, disabling all tracking devices and/or expiration chips implanted in any experiments, unlocking all doors, and figuring out a way to forge birth certificates and get all of you Erasers some good ol' Social Security Numbers. You know, so that when your rebellion succeeds, you won't be left hanging with nowhere to go. I've even been setting up a bank account pool for all of you until you can find jobs and get on your feet."
Anthony blinked.
"You did all that… in four minutes?" he asked. I nodded. "And you stopped the whole poison-gas thing?" I nodded again. "So, we're not going to die?" I smiled.
Anthony sat back. "You're pretty amazing," he said.
I nodded.
Just so you know, I just watched the latest episode of "Downton Abbey" and my mother and eye spent the last ten minutes of it holding hands and crying. It was very sad. Even Thomas cried. Thomas may be a beautiful human being, but he doesn't even like people.
