In the morning we got back into our little car - emphasis on the little.

"There aren't enough seat belts," Gazzy complained from the backseat. The five of them looked like sardines back there.

"And God knows we live our lives totally paranoid about safety measures," I said, looking at a map.

"I'm just saying," said Gazzy. "Yow! Fang!"

Even Fang had winced at that last gear-grinding. I bit my lip so I wouldn't smirk and gave Fang a wide-eyed innocent look. Yes, I swallowed down all the snide comments I could make about his driving, unlike Fang, who had gone ahead and made snide comments when I drove. That's because I'm a better person, frankly. I am a freaking princess when it comes to other people's feelings. Crater, on the other hand, showed him no mercy.

"Damn it bird-brain! Some of us have sensitive ears!" She snapped and grumbled.

"Yo, dogbreath," I said to Total. "Get your paws off the Everglades."

Total moved slightly so I could see the map, Fang ground the gears again, and we lurched on toward our destination: Itex headquarters.

Assuming Angel's intel was good, it was time for us to learn just what the heck I was supposed to do to stop this company from destroying the world. I was tired of dodging it. I was tired of asking about it. I was ready to know.

Here's something that might not occur to you: If a state trooper sees a weird, patchwork Toyota Echo hurtling down 1-95, and it looks like half of a small country is immigrating to the States in this one little car, you might get stopped.

Just FYI.

In general, the seven of us preferred to avoid law enforcement agents of any kind. Especially since we never knew whether they were the real thing or if they would suddenly turn into Erasers, as just another challenge in this twisted lab test of a life we led.

"Should we bail?" Fang asked, looking at the flashing lights in the rearview mirror.

"Probably." I rubbed my forehead, trying to muster the energy for whatever might be coming. I turned back to the others. "We'll stop, and as soon as it looks freaky, up and away, okay?"

I got solemn nods from everyone. Crater flashed me a thumbs up and morphed her hand, keeping it hidden just in case.

"I'm with Iggy," Total said, leaping into the backseat.

Fang clumsily pulled onto the shoulder, kicking up dust and gravel. We shared a glance as a woman in a state trooper uniform got out of her cruiser and walked toward us. We unlocked the car doors and poised for takeoff.

The trooper leaned down into Fang's window, her broad-brimmed hat shadowing her face.

"Good morning, sir," she said, sounding unfriendly. "Do you know how fast you were traveling?"

Fang looked at the speedometer, which hadn't moved since we'd pushed the car out into the darkness last night. "No," he said truthfully.

"I tagged you at seventy miles an hour," she said, pulling out a clipboard.

I let out an impressed whistle. "Excellent! I never thought it'd be that fast!"

Fang shot me a look and I put my hand over my mouth.

"Can I see your license, your registration, and your proof of insurance?" the trooper asked, all business.

We were toast. We'd have to split, which meant we would lose our little jigsaw car, she would see our wings, and she'd probably notify the web of authorities who would make our lives miserable. Miserabler.

"Hi," said Angel from the backseat.

The trooper peered at her through the window. It was then that she seemed to notice how many of us there were, how we were all kids. She looked back at Fang, and this time she realized that he probably wasn't old enough to have a license at all.

"Are you from here? Florida is really flat, huh?" Angel said, getting the trooper's attention for a moment.

"Can you step out of the car, please, sir?" the trooper asked Fang.

"It sure is warm here, for fall," Angel went on. "You could practically go swimming."

Once again the trooper glanced at Angel, but this time something blunted her impulse to turn away. I didn't dare look back at Angel. Once again I was confronted with the whole Angel-doing-something-bad-for-good-reasons thing, and I didn't know what to do.

I decided to let her do it, then lecture her later. A win-win situation.

"We're kind of in a hurry," Angel said pleasantly.

"You're in a hurry," the trooper said. Her eyes were slightly vacant.

"Maybe you could just let us go," Angel went on. "And sort of forget you ever saw us."

"I could just let you go," the trooper repeated. It was incredibly creepy.

"You never saw us or our car," Angel said. "There's a problem somewhere else, and you need to get there now."

The trooper looked back at her cruiser. "I have to go," she said. "There's a problem."

"All right," said Angel. "Thanks."

And we were on our way. Riding in a stolen car with a six-year-old who could control people's minds. Not really the definition of comfortable.

We'd gone a couple miles when Angel spoke again. "I don't know, guys," she said. "I really think maybe I should be the leader."

"I'll be second-in-command," Total offered.

"Oh yeah, you'd be so focused on the job." Gazzy sneered. "Until a rabbit ran across your path."

"Hey!" said Total, glaring at him.

"Guys," I said tiredly. "Listen, Ange, it's sweet of you to offer, but I've got the whole leader thing down, okay? You don't have to worry about it."

"Well, I guess," Angel said, frowning. She didn't sound 100 percent convinced. Crater shivered and looked at Angel like she was a bomb or worse.

What was going on with her?

I believe I've mentioned how freaking slow driving is, compared with flying. In the air there are no stoplights, and there's surprisingly little traffic of other flying mutants. On the other hand, we were relatively hidden in a car.

"Well," said Fang, looking at the huge gates in front of us.

"Yep," I said.

After more than three hours of cautiously slow but still kidney-jarring travel and a pit stop for lunch, we had arrived at Itex headquarters. Through our sheer instinct and heightened powers of deduction, we had zeroed in on the place that might hold some answers for us.

Heightened powers of deduction meaning being able to read all the signs on the highway saying "Itex - Exit 398."

Now we examined the tall iron gates, the professional landscaping.

"No barbed wire," Fang muttered.

"No armed guards," said Nudge. "That little guardhouse is cute, though."

It seemed unusual, which set off blinking red lights in my brain. Was this where the world would get saved? Where my destiny would finally be played out?

Just then a smiling uniformed guard stepped out of the guardhouse. He had no gun or other weapon that we could see.

"Are you all here for the tour?" he asked pleasantly.

"Um, yes," said Fang, his hands tight on the steering wheel.

"I'm sorry - the last one was at four," the guard said. "But come back tomorrow - the tours are every hour on the hour, and they leave from the main lobby." He pointed through the gates to one of the larger buildings.

"Um, okay," said Fang, putting Jigsaw into reverse. "Thanks."

We pulled away but kept the guard in our sight as long as we could. We didn't see him speak to anyone or use his walkie-talkie or anything. It was weird. Once again I felt a heavy sense of unnamed dread settling on my shoulders. I wasn't stupid. Those kids had been sent to us, to give us a message. To get us to Itex. Sooner or later we would find out what was planned for us here, and odds were that it would be nothing good.

My Voice had been quiet for a while, and I almost - almost - wanted it to speak up again, just to drop some clues about what we were doing here.

But there was no way I'd ask it.

"Okay, Iggy, your turn," I said, pressing a small bottle of shampoo into his hand. "And just because you can't see is no excuse to not get all the grime off."

Iggy took the shampoo, and Gazzy directed him toward the bathroom door.

My hair was still wet, dampening my T-shirt at the shoulders. We were ensconced in the lack of luxury of the Twilight Inn, which was the kind of place that had shady deals going on in all the rooms. We hadn't had baths since we'd left Anne's, and the Twilight Inn had the bonus of its own pay laundry room. I'd just gotten back with the last load of warm, dry, clean clothes, which I dumped on one of the double beds.

I felt almost human.

That was a joke - get it?

Nudge, Gazzy, Angel, and Total were on the other bed, watching TV. The kids all had their wings out, letting them dry. Crater was sitting by herself in the corner of the room. I sat down and shoved some laundry at Fang.

"So, Itex," he said, starting to fold and pack.

"Yep. Guess who made the laundry detergent? Guess what gas station we stopped at? Guess who made the soda you're drinking?" Now that I was looking for it, I saw the Itex logo everywhere. It was unbelievable - the company seemed to touch every aspect of our lives. But we'd never thought about it before, never noticed it.

Wordlessly Fang held up a pair of Gazzy's jeans. The back label said Itex.

"This is bad," I said, keeping my voice down.

"You idiot!" Total shouted at the TV causing Crater to jump. "It's the red one! The red one!"

"They're everywhere, all right," I said. "What's worse is, the more I think about it, the more I remember them being everywhere our whole lives. I remember Angel drinking Itex formula from an Itex bottle, and wearing Itex diapers. It's like they've been taking over the world without anyone noticing it."

"Someone noticed it," Fang said slowly, folding a shirt of Iggy's. "Someone at the School noticed it at least fourteen years ago. And built you to try to stop them."

There was my destiny again, slapping me in the face. "Built us."

"Mostly you. I'm pretty sure the rest of us are redundant." Fang sounded matter-of-fact, but the idea bothered me.

"You're not redundant to me," I said, stuffing a pair of shorts into a backpack.

Fang gave me one of his rare, quick smiles.

We turned the lights out early. I lay awake for a long time on the floor, thinking about hex, the company that might blow up the world. My mission was to save the world. So I had to deal with Itex somehow, do something, find out something, stop them from doing something.

As a destiny, it was pretty fuzzy. It was like being told to climb Everest without a map and with no supplies. Plus be responsible for five other people. I felt overwhelmed and weirdly alone, though I was surrounded by my flock. I fell asleep hoping that maybe tomorrow I would be able to come up with something.

As it turned out, my "tomorrow" started in the pitch-darkness, with my hands and feet bound, and a strip of duct tape over my mouth.

Break free! My brain went from sleep to extreme, annihilating panic in an instant. I arched my back with all my strength, bucking myself off the floor. At the same time I tried yanking my hands and feet apart as hard as I could, only to find they wouldn't budge. Think, Max, think! You can get out of this! They can't get you this easily!

My scream was muffled by the duct tape. I heaved myself around, trying to knock into someone or break something to make some noise. I couldn't believe the others were sleeping through this - usually the slightest sound woke any of us. Crater should have been all over this at the slightest sign of struggling. Maybe there's something wrong with them. Oh god if something was wrong with Crater...

Two big, dark figures leaned over me, trying to gather me up, but I struggled against them with all my might. I managed to knee one in the stomach, but it didn't do much. Then the other one simply sat on me, knocking every bit of breath out of my body. Wild-eyed, I sucked in air through my nose, already feeling like I was suffocating.

It had been a long time since I'd been so completely helpless, and it made me crazy. All thought fled my brain - I went into frenzied animal instinct, struggling for my life, willing to kill my captors, to do anything to stay alive.

I was hyperventilating, screaming silently, gouging ridges in my ankles and wrists where they were bound with plastic ties. And still I was helpless.

Still unable to stop the black hood from coming over my head, unable to not breathe the sickly sweet smell, unable to stop myself from letting go, releasing into a deep, cold blackness where there was no pain, no fear, only nothingness.

Oh yeah, and one other bad thing. Really bad, I think. I saw that other Max in the room when they kidnapped me.

And I think she stayed there with the flock.

(Max II)

After the Erasers had taken the inferior Max away from the motel, I quickly lay down in her spot and pulled the blanket over me. I closed my eyes, positive I wouldn't sleep a wink.

I was so hyped up - it was all finally happening. No way would I sleep…. Out with the old Max, in with the new and improved Max. All according to plan.

"Wagh!" I woke up flailing, dreaming that I was being sponged by aliens.

My hand hit something furry and warm, and I felt the furriness jump away. Then I remembered: They had a dog. It must have been licking me. So gross.

I blinked slowly and looked around. The skeezy motel room looked even worse in the daylight than it had in the middle of the night.

"Max?" I looked up to see the little blond boy - Gasman, what a name - leaning over me.

"Uh, what?" I said.

"I'm hungry."

Showtime. Now I would see how well I could play Maximum Ride. "Right," I said, getting up. I was sore and stiff from sleeping on the floor. Now that I could see everyone close up, it was hard for me not to stare. They really were different from Erasers, from Ari. I didn't know how they could stand themselves.

"So, breakfast," I said, trying to remember the drill. "Does the, uh, dog need to go out?"

"We already went out," said the littlest kid. Angel. She cocked her head to one side, looking at me, and I gave her a big smile. Little weirdo. I had no idea why Max stayed with these losers. She would do so much better on her own. Every one of them was a ball and chain, holding her down. She should have dumped them a long time ago. But that was one of her weaknesses: She needed an audience, a pep squad. Someone to hold her hand and tell her how fabulous she was.

I looked over at the door as it opened and I smirked. Hello there. Crater walked in and yawned, smiling at me with that golden million-dollar smile.

"Hey Max," She said cheerfully and I nodded to her.

Anyway. There was a tiny kitchenette in one corner of the room. I went over and put a frying pan on one of the hot plates. "Okay, how about some eggs?" I said, looking inside the minifridge.

"You're going to cook?"

I turned around to see Fang, the older, dark-haired boy, looking at me.

"Aren't you hungry?"

"Not that hungry," Gasman muttered.

I didn't get it. The other older boy, the fair one, stood up.

"I'll do it. Gaz, you pour juice. Nudge, get out the paper plates."

"But you're blind," I said. He couldn't cook. Or was this some kind of joke?

"You're kidding! I am?" the guy - Iggy - said sarcastically. He brushed past me and turned on the hot plate. "Who wants scrambled?"

"Me," said Nudge, raising her hand. She dug out some paper plates and put them on the dinky Formica table.

Huh. Maybe because I was the leader, I didn't do stuff like cook. Well, I had to look busy, in charge.

"Nudge? Come over here and I'll fix your hair." I rummaged in a backpack for a brush. "We could do, like, ponytails or something, get it out of your eyes."

Nudge - another dumb name - looked at me. "You want to fix my hair?"

"Yeah." God, what did Max do all day? She didn't cook, she didn't fix people's hair. Did she just sit on her butt barking orders all the time? "Oh, and hey - you - off the bed." I snapped my fingers at the dog, who just looked at me.

"Why can't he sit on the bed?" Angel asked.

"Because I said so," I said, starting to brush Nudge's hair.

There was silence, and I looked up to see the other four mutant kids looking at me. Well, not the blind one, though his face was turned toward me, which was creepy. Crater raises a brow at me.

"What?" I asked.

(Max)

The last thing I remembered was being kidnapped from the motel room. No, the very last thing I remembered was seeing that other Max in the room. What happened? Had she replaced me? Why?

At the moment, I didn't know if I was awake or asleep, alive or dead. I blinked again and again, but there was complete and utter blackness: no shadows, no blurry forms, no pinprick of light. All of us except Iggy can see extremely well in the dark, so not being able to see anything at all made my blood run cold.

Was I blind now, like Iggy? Had they experimented on my eyes?

Where was I? I remembered being bound and gagged. I remembered passing out. Now I was here, but where "here" was I had no clue.

Where was the flock? None of them had woken up when I'd been taken. Had they been drugged? Something worse? Were they okay? I tried to sit up, but it was as if I was suspended somehow - I couldn't put my feet down, couldn't push off anything. But I felt wetness. I could touch my face. My hair was wet. I reached out with my hands and felt nothing. There was water or something all around me, but it wasn't like ordinary water - I couldn't sink.

I swallowed and blinked again, feeling myself start to panic. Where was my flock? Where was I? What was going on? Was I dead? If I was dead, I was going to be incredibly pissed because there was no way I could deal with this limitless nothingness for an hour, much less eternity. No one had said death would be so intensely boring.

My heart was beating fast, my breaths were quick and shallow, my skin was tingling because blood was rushing to my muscles and main organs: fight or flight. Which reminded me. I stretched out my wings and couldn't feel a thing. Wildly I reached back with one hand. My heavy wing muscles, the thick ridges where they joined my shoulders, were there. I still had wings. I just couldn't feel them.

Was I anesthetized? Was I having an operation? I tried as hard as I could to move, thrashing around in the blackness, but again felt nothing.

Very bad news.

Where the heck was I?

Try to calm down. Calm down. Get it together. If you're dead, you're dead, and there's nothing you can do about it. If you 're not dead, you need to get it together so you can escape, rescue the others, open a can of whup-ass on whoever put you here….

I was completely alone. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been completely alone. If I were in a hammock on a beach, sipping a drink with a little umbrella in it, and I knew the flock was safe and okay and everything was fine, I would be ecstatic. Being alone, off-duty, able to relax - it would be a dream come true.

Instead I was alone with darkness, with fear, with uncertainty. So where was I?

You might not want to know.

The Voice. I wasn't completely alone after all. The Voice was still with me.

"Do you know where I am?" I spoke out loud, my voice dropping away into dull nothingness.

Yes.

"So tell me!"

Are you sure you want to know?

"Oh no, I enjoy being in a state of complete ignorance!" I snapped. "This is why I don't want you around anymore! Now tell me, you jerk!"

You're in an isolation tank. A sensory-deprivation chamber. I don't know where, exactly.

"Oh, my God. You were right - I didn't want to know."

An isolation tank. Nothing but me, my totally screwed-up consciousness, and the Voice. Well, I could probably stand this for say, oh, ten minutes before I went stark-raving nuts.

Knowing the whitecoats, they probably planned to keep me in here a year or two, so they could take notes, see what happened to me.

I needed to die, right now.

But I'm Maximum Ride. So it wouldn't be that easy, would it?

Of course not. My life would never contain a convenient, pain-saving plan when it could stretch a problem out into an endless agony of uncertainty and torture.

I don't know how long I was in the tank. It could have been ten minutes. It felt like ten years. A lifetime. Maybe I slept. I know I hallucinated. Again and again I "woke up" to find myself back with the flock, back in our house in Colorado or in the subway tunnels of NYC or in the Twilight Inn. I saw Ella Martinez and her mom again, smiling and waving at me. I saw Crater waiting for me by that little creak at Anne's, her hand outstretched and waiting for mine.

I think I cried for a while.

Basically every thought I'd ever had in my entire life, I had all over again, one after another in rapid-fire succession. Every memory, every color, every taste, every sensation of any kind replayed itself in my fevered brain, endless loops of thought and memory and dream and hope, over and over, until I couldn't tell what had been real and what had been wishful thinking and what had been a movie I'd seen or a book I'd read. I didn't know if I was really Max, or if I really had wings, or if I really had a family of bird kids like me. Nothing was real except being in this tank. And maybe not even that.

I sang for a while, I think. I talked. Finally my voice went. Weirdly, I was never hungry or thirsty. Nothing hurt; nothing felt good.

So when the tank was finally cracked open and light streamed in, it seemed like the worst, most painful thing that had ever happened to me.

I screamed, but the sound of my own voice was intensely loud, piercing my eardrums, so I shut up immediately. I squeezed my eyes shut against the blinding light and curled into a ball as much as I could. Big hands grabbed me and pulled me up, and just their touch, after so much nothingness, freaked out my senses.

They put me on a bed and covered me with a blanket. The feeling of anything touching me was torture. I huddled there trying not to move for a long, long time.

Finally I realized that I wasn't in so much pain anymore. I tried opening one eye a slit. It was too bright, but I didn't feel like my retina was searing.

"Max?" The hushed whisper woke every nerve all over again, sending unbearably painful chills down my spine. I tensed, my eyes closed. I no longer knew how to run, how to flee, how to fight.

I wanted to be back in the tank, the blessed darkness and silence and nothingness.

"Max, how are you doing?"

Jim Dandy, I thought hysterically. Peachy. Never better.

"Max, do you need anything?"

That was such a ludicrous question that I felt myself smile.

"I need to ask you some questions," the voice whispered. "I need to know where the flock is heading. I need to know what happened in Virginia."

That got me. A couple of synapses actually connected in my brain. I pulled the blanket down just a little and opened my eyes a slit. "You know what happened in Virginia," I said. My voice was thin and rusty, made of nails. "You were there, Jeb."

"Only at the end, sweetheart," Jeb said, his voice very quiet. He was kneeling on the floor next to the cot I was on. "I don't know what happened before then, how everything fell apart. I don't know where the flock is headed now or what your plan is."

Now I felt maybe 10 percent like myself. "Jeb, I'm afraid you're going to have to learn to live with not knowing." I chuckled a tiny bit. It sounded like a cat choking.

"That's my Max," Jeb said affectionately. "Tough till the end. Even after everything, you're still in better shape than anyone else would be. But I have to tell you, you need to get on board with this saving-the-world project."

"I'll try to pencil it in," I croaked. Now I felt enough like myself to be irritated.

Jeb leaned closer to me. I opened my eyes and looked him straight in the face, that familiar face that had represented everything good in my life, at one time. And now represented everything bad.

"Max, please," he whispered. "Please just play along. They want to terminate you. They think you're a lost cause."

This was news.

"Who?"

"Itex. They're keeping you here while they try out their latest, greatest invention. They wanted you to lead with your head, not your heart, Max. I tried to teach you that, but maybe I failed. They're trying to take all of the heart out of you by keeping you here. But you care about things, and about people, Max. Like me. Please, don't make everything that's happened up till now meaningless. Don't give them cause to take you out, start over with someone else. Show them they're wrong about you. Show them you've got what it takes."

"I'll show them I've got what it takes to rip your spleen out through your nose," I said weakly.

"Batchelder!" I suddenly heard a deep voice from behind me. "You're not authorized to be in here."

Then my light was blocked again, the blanket was pulled off, and big hands picked me up and dropped me back into the horrible tank.

(Max II)

I led the five mutant freaks through the shadows toward Itex.

"In here." I held aside some bushes and motioned them through. It was dark, finally. I'd thought spending days watching a bunch of Erasers play Texas hold 'em was boring, but that didn't compare to today.

I didn't know how the original Max stood it. I'd lost count of how many times today I'd wanted to scream at them to shut up and get away from me. That Nudge never quit yapping, and Angel and Gasman had gotten into disputes like whether the sky was blue and what day this was. I hadn't found any chinks in Fang's armor, but it was just a matter of time. Angel frankly creeped me out - she was a loose cannon. Maybe she was kind of unstable. I would have to tell them that when I got back. Gasman seemed like a gullible idiot, and Iggy was dead weight, as far as I could tell. Except that he could cook, for some reason. Plus, they all talked to the dog like it was a person, asking it if it wanted this or that. I mean, it was a freaking dog.

I looked over at Crater who was relatively calm and being all smiley. It was starting to get annoying. Was this seriously the strongest mutant of the Erasers? She was just some dumb cuddly nobody. When were the claws and the growling gonna come up?

But finally it was time. We'd gone on the tour of Itex today, and I'd made a big deal about noticing its weak points. Now we were "breaking in." I was trying to be careful, look like I was on guard.

I have to say, I was doing great. They didn't suspect a thing. All my training, the lessons, the practice - it was paying off. It was gratifying, how obvious it was that I was the new and improved version. In fact, it was weird how willing these freaks were to follow me around, do what I said. I'd told 'em we were going to break into Itex, and they were all on board. Even the dumb dog. When we were leaving the hotel, I'd tried to shut it inside the room, but Nudge had held the door open for it to trot out.

"The dog's coming on a raid?" I'd asked, my eyebrows raised.

"Of course he's coming," Nudge had said, looking surprised. "He always comes."

O-kaaay, I'd thought. I'm starting to put my finger on why you guys are slated for termination.

But whatever. They followed orders, anyway. I led them up a grassy hill, looking around - like someone was going to catch us, right? There was a huge HVAC box next to the main building, and we quickly unscrewed the cover. I jammed a stick in the enormous fan, and then we all hurried through. I yanked the stick out, the fan started spinning again, and we were in.

"That was a good idea," said Fang. Which was about five more words than he'd said all day.

I shrugged. I knew Max was totally full of herself, but that didn't mean I had to be. We started moving through the air vent system.

I was trying to remember to seem nervous, to look around, to act like I was considering which way to go. Sometimes I stopped everyone and put my finger to my lips, as if someone were coming. It was hysterical.

Crater was in the way back like a guard dog or something, freezing up every time I stop. It took so much not to burst out laughing.

We got to the main branch of the HVAC system, and I pretended to hesitate before I led them all into the vent that went to the basement. Just a few more minutes, another couple hundred yards, and my job would be over.

And so would they.

(Max)

Being back in the isolation tank after seeing Jeb was a huge relief - for about two milliseconds. Then I started thinking about what he had said. I remembered that I had a flock depending on me. I remembered that I was Invincible Max and that the whitecoats making me run through their maze were a bunch of losers.

Which left the question: how to get out of here?

I still couldn't sit up, couldn't feel anything. I was spacing out and hallucinating again - it was way hard to concentrate, to remember what I was doing instead of floating off into la-la land.

Think, Max.

Then I remembered I had a Voice in my head. Voice, you got any ideas?

What is it they want from you? the Voice said, shocking me. It had never, ever responded to a direct question before. At least that I could remember, right then.

Uh… what did they want from me? Just for me to be here. To be able to do things to me, make me jump through their hoops, be their lab rat.

What would happen if you took that away from them?

I thought. They would be very upset?

I smiled. But how could I take that away from them? I'd pretty much established that I couldn't break out of this sardine can.

Think about it.

Now that I really thought about it, realizing how limited my options truly were kind of freaked me out. Here was a situation where all my speed, my physical strength, my cunning - none of it would do me any good.

It was mind-blowing.

If I hadn't been so totally spaced, I would have panicked.

As it was, I felt oddly removed from the problem. Freaked, but removed at the same time. I was losing myself. Losing my mind.

Losing myself… losing me. They would be upset if they lost me. Because I wouldn't be around to jump through their hoops. But since I couldn't physically move, getting lost seemed pretty unworkable.

Except.

There was another way for them to lose me: if I died.

Which would sort of defeat my own purpose, as well as theirs. But - could I just make them think I was dead?

I bet there were monitors of some sort in here. When you put a rat in a maze, you hung around to observe the results. They'd probably been recording my crazed ranting and sobbing all along.

Now. How to be dead?

I lay back in the buoyant liquid. It supported me totally - I didn't have to try to keep my head up or anything. My breathing slowed, in and out, one, two, three, four. I relaxed every single muscle. Then I just.. . went inside myself. It was like I was a machine and I was slowly flicking switches off. I just willed all my systems to slow down more and more.

In the yawning silence, my heart beat slower, then slower. My eyes closed. Everything was still and silent. Maybe I would lie in this watery tomb forever.

There was no time, no thought, no motion.

I hoped I wasn't actually dead.

That would make finding our parents and saving the world really hard.

(Max II)

I see no need to go into a lot of boring detail, but we found our way to the Itex computer room. So far, the plan was working beautifully.

I shooed everyone away to the darkest corner of the room, and they actually listened to me. Crater watched me silently, almost being as annoying as Fang. Then I turned one computer on, and it booted up silently. I had been told Nudge was good with computers, so I motioned her over.

"See what you can find out about Itex," I whispered. "Be quick - I don't know how much time we have."

We had exactly six minutes, forty-seven seconds, according to my watch.

"Okay," Nudge whispered back. She slid onto the stool and instantly went to the "List Programs" menu. From there she got to a C prompt, and then she typed in a bunch of gibberish.

I sighed to myself, waiting for her to get stuck, and then I'd have to take over. They'd taught me everything I needed to make sure I could get us where we had to go.

"Oh, here," Nudge whispered, and I watched in surprise as page after page of information, all labeled "Restricted Access Only" filled the screen. Hmm. Maybe this mutant was smarter than she looked. Maybe somehow, something had come out right, with her.

"Okay, start reading," I said, looking over her shoulder.

Time was running out for the freaks.

(Max)

I, Maximum Ride, was dead, and nobody seemed to have noticed.

Maybe I really was dead. I was starting to not really care one way or another.

Finally, finally my captors figured out that instead of an interesting, captive lab rat, they now had a much less interactive dead body on their hands.

Deep in my trance, I had only a split second to brace myself as they ripped open the top of the tank, letting in retina-searing, blinding light. Staying limp was the hardest thing I had ever done.

Voices said, "What happened? Who was monitoring her? They're gonna have our butts!"

Once again hands grabbed me and hauled me out of there. Once again it was the most horrible, painful thing I could imagine. But this time I forced my eyes open, put my feet down, and roared.

My knees buckled under me, but I flung my wings out, shaking as much moisture as possible off them. I had a brief glimpse of astonished, then angry faces, and, with another raspy, croaky roar, not nearly as intimidating as I'd hoped, I leaped up shakily.

I saw a blurred image of a window and ran at it, hardly able to keep on my rubbery legs. When I was close, I threw myself at the glass as hands grabbed at my wet clothes and wings.

Please don't let this glass have chicken wire embedded in it, I remembered to pray at the last second. I guess it didn't, because I crashed right through it, which made every cell in my body feel as if it had been crushed by a truck. Screaming in pain, I felt damp air hit my cheeks and then I started to fall.

I tried to move my wings, tried to remember that familiar feeling of catching wind beneath them: light, beautiful sails of muscle and feather and bone. But I felt only numbness, a deadened sensation, as if I'd been dipped in novocaine.

Work, dang it, work! I thought, and had an image of myself crumpling into a broken heap on the ground, maybe five stories below.

It was dark out: less painful for my eyes. I opened them to see the ground rushing up at me way too fast. Once again I flung my wings out, desperate for them to catch me, to snatch me back up into the air.

And they did-just as my bare feet banged against the grass. Then I was lurching unsteadily upward, trying to remember how to fly, how to move my muscles, how to unhinge my shoulder blades to give me more freedom. I lifted up past the broken window, which had several angry faces crowded in it.

One face wasn't angry. Jeb's. He held his hand out the window, giving me a thumbs-up.

"See you soon, sweetheart!" he called.

I soared upward, the wind blowing my wet hair back.

What was with him?

(Max II)

"Geez, there's so much stuff here," Gasman whispered, reading over Nudge's shoulder.

Yeah-huh, no kidding, I thought. I hadn't expected nearly this amount of info on Itex. I wondered if they'd had any idea that this kid would be so successful at hacking in.

Nudge was scrolling through pages fast. I kept an eye on my watch, ready to hurry everyone on to part two of tonight's little charade.

"I wonder," Nudge said, suddenly stopping her typing and sitting very still. "I wonder if Jeb has been here. I feel something." Cripes, I thought. This is getting creepy.

"Why would Jeb have been here?" I snapped. "He has nothing to do with Itex."

"Max, I can feel his vibe. He was here. Maybe there is something on him, on us, in the Itex files." Her fingers started flying.

"What are you doing?" I whispered. "No ad-libbing - stick to the program."

Irritated, I quickly checked out the others. Gasman and Iggy were beneath a counter, and Gasman was looking up at something. Fang was standing guard by the door. Crater was waiting in a corner of the room doing nothing at all.

Angel and her unwanted flea-magnet were sitting very still, close to Fang. Angel's eyes were closed, I noticed with irritation. Nice time to take a nap. Just then her eyes popped open and she looked straight at me. I gave her a reassuring smile and turned back to Nudge.

"Oh, gosh," Nudge whispered as the screen suddenly filled again. "Look, look!"

Frowning, I watched as pages of documents tiled before us. On the top was a photograph of a baby. It was wearing a white hospital bracelet that said, "I'm a Girl! My name is Monique." The Monique part was handwritten.

"That's me, me as a baby," Nudge said excitedly.

I had no idea why she thought this, but whatever. She started scrolling through the pages and hit a huge patch of, like, blueprints or mechanical drawings, schematics, design plans. I looked closer and frowned. These were plans of how to recombine the baby's DNA, graft avian DNA into her stem cells.

"Max, Max, look at this," Nudge whispered, pointing. There, at the bottom of a long medical form, was the signature of Jeb Batchelder. "Oh, my gosh. Max - can you believe this? Fang?"

Fang came over silently and read over her shoulder. His eyes narrowed. I didn't understand - how could Jeb Batchelder be here in Itex's files? We were supposed to be finding out stuff about how evil Itex was - not about the scientists at the School.

Nudge clicked on a link, and a small media-player window popped up. It was labeled "Parents, two days post."

A fuzzy video clip of a black couple started playing. The woman was crying, and the man had a pained, frozen expression on his face, as if he'd just seen a horrible accident. The woman was saying, "My baby! Who would take my baby? Her name was Monique! If anyone knows where my baby is, please, please bring her back. She's my world!" The woman broke down sobbing and couldn't go on.

This wasn't the stuff we were supposed to be seeing. We were supposed to be looking at file after file about how Itex was polluting the planet, destroying natural resources, using child labor, and so on. Despite myself, I was intrigued by what Nudge was finding.

"That doesn't make sense," I said, after the video played. "We saw the medical consent form a few screens back."

Nudge sniffled and clicked back to the form. At the bottom were signatures of Monique's parents, authorizing someone named Roland ter Borcht to "treat" their baby.

But, now that we looked at them, the parent signatures looked exactly like Jeb Batchelder's.

I didn't know what to think. None of this agreed with what they had told me. What was real? Crying silently, Nudge continued to scroll through the file. Another photograph of the woman filled the screen. She looked older and incredibly sad. Stamped across the photo in red ink was the word "Terminated."

Suddenly Iggy pulled his head out from under the counter. He was holding some wires in one hand. "Someone's coming," he said.

(Max)

Freedom is still freedom, even if you're soaked, practically nuts, and having trouble getting your muscles to cooperate.