TWENTY-FOUR

A dark hallway; a long, lonely walk; a silent march; some other eloquent bullshit: I'd been here many times before.

And yet, this time was so different.

The tiny, scared part of me (yes, it exists) wanted to wait for Fang, Nudge, and Iggy, but I obviously had no choice: my babies were somewhere deep in the bowels of this place, and every second that passed was another second that they were at the hands of Silas Scythe and his cronies.

So here I was, alone, facing the biggest challenge we'd come across as a flock to date. All I could think of was the mission that had been slated to me by Jeb years ago: You have to save the world.

At the time, it had seemed so farfetched, so unrealistic; just another ridiculous ultimatum presented to me by the man who'd betrayed us the most over the course of our wretched mutant lives. But now, as I trudged through the underbelly of the Applebee's on Huntington Avenue, it all seemed to make sense.

Suddenly, I was furious. Jeb had known this the whole time, followed orders to a T, and held out on us, then? Had everything else been a stupid game? He was evil, he was cruel, he'd done unspeakable things—but this?

Walk. I told myself. Walk the walk. Sum up your rage. Channel it into your fists. You'll be pummeling the crap out of something soon.

Yeah. Or I'd be dying.

I was still walking. The hallway seemed to stretch on endlessly. Where was I headed? I had to be far out of the reaches of Applebee's. I tried to picture the map of the city in my head and remember what was next door, but nothing came. Where was Fang and his photographic memory when you needed him?

On his way. Keep moving. Everything's fine.

There was no sign that the Gasman had ever been here, not that I could imagine what sort of sign I was expecting. It was still pitch black, but I could guess by the acoustics of the place that it was empty. It wasn't until I got to the end of the hallway when it became abundantly clear that the Gasman had definitely not been here for one glaringly obvious reason:

I'd been the one to undo the paneling to the basement. I'd pried it away from the door with my bare hands.

How the hell had he gotten in?

My stomach dropped into my toes.

Okay, I thought, starting to walk a bit faster. Don't panic. Think.

There were three options.

1. The Gasman had been totally kidnapped and taken in by some secret entrance.

2. The Gasman had, indeed, done some preparation and recon, and had disabled the entire camera system and found another way into this secret lair, either by finding plans to the building or some other far-fetched nonsense.

3. The entire camera system had been disabled by Vector as a decoy, but despite this, the Gasman was somehow able to slip into this place undetected.

My heart sank as I considered these. The odds that Gazzy had found a way into this place—which seemed to be freaking miles from the Applebee's by underground tunnel system—seemed incredibly thin, considering the amount of time he'd had to size it up.

Every ounce of me was aching to launch into a full-blown panic spree, but I forced it down deep into some box that would undoubtedly explode at a later time (if I lived to see one). This was not the time for feelings. This was a time for actions.

I reached the end of the hall finally. There was a sliding metal door there. I'd seen a million like it over the course of our time at the School—the familiar sight made my stomach churn. It was motion sensitive, which meant once I got close enough to it, it would—

Click. The door slid open neatly and revealed a plain room lit with an overhead halogen light. I squinted against it as my eyes adjusted.

If anything, it seemed like an anteroom—there was nothing there but a kiosk of some sort that looked to be for signing in and a door on the far wall. A single camera in the upper right corner sat unblinking. I wondered briefly what the ever-loving hell was going on here.

Okay, I thought, advancing on the next door, feeling every freaky mutant feeler on in my body come to attention, round two, here we go…

"Max."

I stopped halfway across the room and nearly jumped out of my skin. I looked toward the floor so quickly that my head almost came clean off my body. Along the floorboard, directly to my left, was a vent—peering through the slats were the very distinct chocolate brown eyes of Nudge.

"Nudge?" I hissed. "What the—why is it always the ductwork?"

"No time," she whispered. "They got Gazzy, they have to know you're coming, but I don't think they expected you to walk straight in—"

"They got Gazzy?" No, no, no—

"He's okay, as of five minutes ago. He managed to get the camera system offline and somehow set the computers to loop the same footage so it looks like the hallways are empty—"

"He managed to—wait, what?"

"I have no idea how he did it," she said excitedly, "I can't wait to ask him, it's totally genius—"

"Okay, so they got Gazzy, you're here—what do you need me to do?" I asked. "Where are Fang and Iggy?"

"Up here, too. A little further down. I'm going to meet them, I just wanted to catch you."

"How the hell did you get up there?"

I caught her toothy grin. "Gazzy tipped us off."

"How did he—?"

A loud bang sounded from the other side of the door.

"Go!" she whispered harshly. "Cause a diversion! We'll see you in the—"

The door slid open and I locked eyes with what had to be a Vector soldier—he was towering, bulky, and slightly inhuman looking. His eyebrows raised in surprise for half a second before he charged at me.

Go time.

I dodged him easily the first time. The anteroom was small and didn't leave us much room to fight. The noise was undoubtedly going to attract a million other people, so my best bet was to run for it—I was quicker than them, I knew.

He barreled at me again, but I leapt out of the way, narrowly missing a kick as I did so. I put my arms in front of me in a defensive block—he wound up to punch again but I jumped as high as I could and dove over his shoulder, landing on my feet with ease and launching myself through the sliding door.

What was waiting behind this door was certainly not an anteroom—it was nothing short of a metallic labyrinth. Memories of the School flashed behind my eyes so powerfully that I stagger-stepped backward before I pulled my act together.

I started running. With just the one threat behind me, I had time to focus my attention elsewhere. I studied the walls, looking for any indication of where I might want to go, and I tried to hone in on any of the flock's scent—it was useless, of course; everything smelled like antiseptic wash and formaldehyde.

The Vector soldier behind me hollered something, but I was in a full sprint and not planning on stopping any time soon. I heard more footsteps thumping behind me and knew it was only a matter of time before they closed in on all sides.

Nudge's voice was ringing in my head, urging me to cause a diversion. I didn't want to be just a diversion—it wasn't quite my style; I wanted to find Gazzy and Angel, be the hero, get everyone out safe and sound with no firefight—but there was no way that would ever come to fruition, given the circumstances, so I settled for the next best thing.

I'll be the best goddamn diversion the world has ever seen.

I shot through another sliding door and into a room with gurneys and instrument trays. I bashed into and knocked over anything I could, sending hemostats clattering to the ground and bedframes rolling across the room.

"Looking for me, Silas?" I yelled tauntingly. "Well, come and get me!"

Another door. Another room. Footsteps to my left this time—I took a hard right and pounded through yet another door. In this room, pods that looked like tanning beds, but were something drastically more insidious. Isolation tanks.

"Si-laaas!" I bellowed in a sing-songy voice, pushing that memory way the hell down where it wouldn't see the light of day. "Here I aaaaa-aaam!"

Another door. Another door. Another door—

And then I came slamming to a stop.

This room was not quite like the others. Thick, iron beams supported the ceiling, even higher than the ones in the rooms before it. Three of the walls were starkly white and lined with desks, computers, and other machines I didn't recognize, not even from my days at the School. A cage, not unlike one that might be used to house a bird sanctuary at a zoo, sat against the wall to my left, which was plated with metal. The cage was not empty.

This room had a tall, thin man at the center. His hair was the color of jet fuel and his face was clean shaven. He wore a pair of slacks, a plain white button up, and a blazer. His hands were in his pockets and he was shifting his weight back and forth from his heels to the balls of his feet where he stood in front of a desk with a laptop on it.

And he was smiling. Not at me, but at the very slumped, very still, very lifeless form in the cage.

The Gasman.

The panicked exclamation exploded out of me before I could stop it: "Gazzy!"

I broke into a run across the room, but I hadn't made it ten feet before an indescribable, explosive pain blossomed behind my eyes, dropping me to the floor.

"Maximum," he said. His voice was low and gravelly and unkind.

"Stop," I gasped, "please, stop—stop—"

A single moment dragged on for eternity. Every nerve ending in my body was on fire. And then, just like that, it was gone.

I forced myself to my knees, nerves alight and twitching, and looked up at the man. A crooked smile had split his face in half. I had no idea how he'd done this—the chip was out, and I hadn't had a brain explosion since its removal; this wasn't even just pain in my head, but pain at every synapse; how could anyone inflict such pain without an instrument of some sort?—but, at once, I knew who I was dealing with.

"Scythe," I spat. I rose to my feet and started to walk toward him, wings twitching at my back, ready for my time to strike.

I found myself on the floor again, writhing like a trapped snake. I thrashed, trying to shake off the feeling of electrocution, of every single fiber of every single muscle being wrung out to dry, of torment.

This time, when it stopped, I was slower rising to my knees, and I realized all at once that I was absolutely, positively screwed. He had the upper hand.

"Max," he said. My name rolled off his tongue like a curse word. "Thanks so much for popping in. Love that you tried to make it a challenge. This one disabling the cameras?" he gestured to Gazzy. "Totally unexpected. I figured it'd be—Nudge? Is that what you call her? Number Four, at any rate."

Number Four. That's what we were to him. To Jeb, and Anne, and all of them. Numbers.

"They'll be joining us soon, I assume. Somewhere in the ductwork, if I'm not mistaken?"

My legs almost buckled underneath me. He knew. I fought the panic, trying to keep my face totally indifferent, but I'd already blown it—the half-second of utter shock had flashed across my face.

"You don't know anything," I snarled anyway. The corners of his mouth crept even further toward his eyes.

"I know everything. In fact, I own everything."

"Bullshit."

He raised an eyebrow and lifted his computer, turning the screen to face me. The background was a generic one, similar to one you might find on Windows XP, but instead of a symbol, it was one word:

Itex.

"Wait," I said, and a thick, horrifying feeling of dread settled in my bones like a sickness. "You… you own Itex?"

Scythe smiled, flashing a perfectly straight row of blinding white teeth. "Max," he said with such a cliché, evil chuckle that I almost couldn't believe it, "I own everything."

I snorted at his cockiness despite the absolute terror pulsing through me.

"Define everything."

He grinned again, that stupid, know-it-all, holier-than-thou grin. "Vector has been government-protected since the reign of Gideon Goodrich," Scythe said. "And as far as everyone in America knows, he's still in charge of the company. He knew his life was in my hands—and his ongoing livelihood is as well. I'm still not sure how I'll throw his family off the scent—they're quite persistent, those sisters of his—showing up to his apartment, filing a missing persons report…"

I thought of Goodchurch, his family, the legacy he'd started to establish for himself. I thought of the scream I'd heard as I fled Marion Rodgers' house what felt like eons ago. I thought of all of the wild things I'd do to make this all stop—to be born into a different life, a different time, a different universe.

"Within months of my remodeling, we were a conglomerate with so much dirt on all of our clients that no one would dare make a peep. At first, I had no clue about the existence of this branch of Vector."

Remodeling, he had called it. More like total takeover and dictatorship.

"A place called 'the School?' I assumed it would—of course—be related to education, which was not a priority of mine; I left it in the control of one of my inferiors. A company called 'Itex?' A normal name for a software company; not my focus. It was grossing immensely, so I never questioned it. A few years ago, however, one of my men brought me a little birdie named Jeb Batchelder, who, with some… convincing, told me all about his six beloved 'Angel Experiments.' It was dedicated, how desperately he tried to hide you for so long, but every man breaks eventually."

So Jeb hadn't known. And he'd tried to protect us. My stomach dropped to my feet, but I wasn't sure from what emotion yet.

"Naturally, I took up a great interest. I'd heard fairy tales about the mythical bird-children. A conspiracy, as far as I was concerned, but now, you were real. And I owned you. The trouble was, you were nowhere to be found. So I did some hunting. Over the past few years, I compiled valuable information. Who do you thinkbuilt new receptor towers for your microchip? Who do you thinktook over as the Voice inside your head?"

"Liar," I spat. "If you didn't know about us until a few years ago, then why did they torture us at the School? Who made that call? Because it certainly wasn't Gideon Goodchurch."

Scythe's lips spread into another filthy smile. "You did the math, finally, did you? No, it wasn't Goodchurch. And you're correct—it wasn't me either. Do you know who oversaw the School until I became aware of its existence? Do you know who tried to keep control over you for his own benefit? So he could play with you like a puppet? So he could do whatever he wanted?"

My blood turned to ice. My hands clenched into fists at my sides, desperate to punch something, to grab onto something for support, to reach for my head to hold it in an attempt to contain the pounding.

"Why do you think I showed you those terrible memories of the man who let you be sawed open, who let you nearly die, who tried to impregnate you at the age of eight?"

No. No, no, no, please, no…

Scythe was talking again, but I was long past the point of understanding anything coming out of his mouth. Deep down, I think I'd always known it had probably been Jeb at the helm. But part of me held on to the hope that the things they'd done hadn't been on his orders—that he'd been forced by the hand of another to do what he did. As evil and scummy as Scythe was, I knew he wasn't lying—something in the vacant blackness of his eyes told me so.

At about this time, before I had a second to process, absolute chaos broke out.

Clang!

Behind me, there was a flurry of movement and noise. I turned in time to see, high above me, a ceiling vent drop to the ground. Another item dropped like a stone directly toward where Scythe was standing—he didn't have enough time to react, and it hit him on the forehead. He collapsed to the floor.

It all happened very quickly then.

Iggy's blurred form was on top of him, wrestling Scythe's hands behind him as he thrashed and scrambled away. Nudge dropped afterward and shot over to where Gazzy was contained, her hands, clumsy with nerves, brushing over the electronic keypad that locked him away.

The sliding door behind us opened again and two Vector soldiers barreled into the room. One launched himself at Iggy, who was no match for the Vector soldier alone, let alone another person of any capacity, even with rage on his side. The other was already on top of Nudge, pinning her to the ground—I pushed myself to my feet and moved to help her, to try to break into the cage, to do anything—

—And then I was on the floor in a ball, more agony, like fire, ripping through each nerve ending, leaving me convulsing and crying and bellowing for help—how was he doing this? I tried to force it away, to force myself out of it, but it was no use—

Again, like the flick of a switch, it was gone. I fought the residual shocks in my muscles and stumbled to my feet, raking my gaze across the room.

Nudge and Iggy were being wrangled toward the cage where the Gasman was slumped by two of the Vector soldiers. A third one had apparently arrived while I'd been on the floor; he activated the keypad and stepped aside so they could be shoved in before slamming the door on their faces.

A billion thoughts flooded my mind—everything Scythe had just told me, the Gasman's condition, the keypad on the cage—and then a billion more questions: how were we going to get out of here? How was I going to save us all? What was this man going to do with us?

All of these pressing things, yet the most pressing was what flew out of my mouth as I looked pleadingly at Nudge and Iggy:

"Where's Fang?"

Nudge, who'd ducked down to check on the Gasman, offered me a look that I could not discern. Her face, so expressive, held a look of distress.

"Nudge," I implored. My heart was slamming away at my ribcage. "Nudge—where is Fang?"

"Yes," Silas said in a peculiar voice. "Where is Fang?"

"Don't fuck with me!" I shouted at him. "Where is he?"

"You don't know any more than I do," Silas said in that same voice. "Maybe we should ask dear Nudge again, here."

"I don't know," Nudge said in a small voice.

All at once, the pain was back. I dropped again to the ground, head to my hands, trying not to scream. It didn't stop—it seemed like it never stopped—a shriek burst through my lips, and I was pleading again, pathetically pleading—

The impulse was gone. My muscles relaxed. Nudge was sobbing behind me. I opened my eyes and saw Iggy's tight face, fuchsia with rage. His hands were white-knuckling the cage bars.

"Enough!" he shouted. A note of hysteria rang through the single word. "Enough! You're going to kill her!"

"I'm fine," I gasped, pushing myself on my hands and knees, fighting with the tiny part of me that was done, that was ready to die, that couldn't take this anymore, that was undisputedly not fine, "I'm fine—"

He did it again. I collapsed again to the ground and felt that tiny part of me growing—the part wondering how much more of this could I tolerate before I croaked or went insane, I wasn't sure—

Iggy's voice cut through the pandemonium once more, the only thing I could cling to in my state. "Please!"

He'd stopped again. My voice was hoarse from screaming; I was so exhausted that it was no more than a puff of air in the massive room. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. One fell, betraying the façade I'd tried to manage. Nudge was still sobbing. "Please," Iggy repeated.

Scythe was fiddling with something in his hand, some sort of small device that had a red button on the top. It had to be responsible for the pain. I had to get at it and destroy it if I was going to be of any help, but how?

Scythe continued from where he'd left off before the chaos. "I kept that man—the one responsible for your misery, for your agony, for your suffering—at the forefront of your mind, at the center of your nightmares, so that when you came searching for me with bloodlust in your eyes and found that I wasn't the enemy, you'd have a place for this rage, this resentment. So I'll give you a choice, Maximum Ride."

I didn't like where this was going, because it was nowhere good. He'd tortured me, locked up my family, done—something—to Gazzy; there was no way any choice would even remotely benefit us.

It'd be the lesser of two evils, then.

"These two are disposable to me, and, as far as I'm concerned, a liability. Kill the two of them, and you and your family can walk out of here—under my control, of course; but maybe more as… colleagues. But if you can't, you'll be sticking around a bit longer."

My first thought was that he was referring to Nudge, Iggy, and Gazzy—but there were three of them. My next thought was, Oh, my God, the Gasman is dead, but before my fear could dissolve into full-blown hysteria, I realized Nudge had in no way gestured that that was the case, and I was fairly certain that I could see the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

At this point in my miserable life, I was certain nothing could shock me anymore. But then something happened that had my jaw nearly on the floor.

Before my eyes, the expanse of metal wall next to the cage that held Gazzy, Nudge, and Iggy parted open from a crease in the middle, revealing a glass wall behind it. Behind the glass was a small room, impeccably white and no bigger than twenty square feet.

And standing there, pale, emaciated, and in nothing but threadbare grey jumpsuits, stood Anne Walker and Jeb Batchelder.

These two are disposable to me, Silas Scythe had said.

Kill them, and you and your family can walk out of here.

A/N: Maybe two or three more chapters. A lot of the next chapter is written. Love y'all, thanks for sticking with me.