TWENTY-SIX

I didn't want to look. Nothing to see, really. Any emotions I might've felt were completely eviscerated by shock. But some part of me felt like I owed it to them. These two people had manipulated us and caused us so much pain, but also, at one point, had fostered us, homed us, cared about us.

So I did, finally, turn and look.

You don't need to know. It's not something I imagine anyone would be better off for knowing.

Angel was still bellowing next to me. In the cell, the Gasman, now fully conscious, looked near to vomiting. Nudge had tears in her eyes. Iggy looked grim. I could sense Fang behind me—he was undoubtedly on the balls of his feet, trying to filter out the shriek of the alarm and the flashing red light while mapping exits and assessing flock members and planning for an escape.

Shock had very quickly muffled my emotions, but when the blinding, unyielding anger came, it was overpowering.

This was over. Now. It ended with me.

It had to.

"You're sick," I hissed at Scythe. He kept the smoking gun raised and, as though challenging me, raised his dark eyebrow.

Nothing about his gaze showed any remorse. His pupils were disturbingly huge, his expression was cocky, and the corners of his mouth were turned upward in a suppressed smile. He was under the impression he had the upper hand.

He was mocking us.

He fired off another shot. I hurtled forward and was on top of him in an instant. His head slammed against the floor, forcing his grip to slacken and giving me an opportunity to knock the gun out of his hand. I shoved it as far away from us as possible.

Fang's voice, as recognizable as my own, cut through the chaos. "Max!"

"No!" I shouted over my shoulder. My heart was racing, blood pulsing, adrenaline filling every vessel. "Get them out!"

Scythe's face was twisted into that smile again. I thought of all of the suffering he'd caused so many people—from Gideon Goodchurch to Marion Rodgers to Jeb and Anne to all the other mutants and then, finally, most importantly and most painfully, my flock—and I knew what I had to do.

Being kind and fair has gotten me far in life, that is true. Well, maybe it caused a few setbacks here and there, but by and large, I've always done what I had to do to keep my moral code in check, and I've been okay with those decisions.

This was not one of those times.

This was a time for action. A time for leaving my comfort zone. A time for making a decision that would be something more than a band-aid for our constantly-on-the-run situation, something more than buying time to hide from the inevitable, something more than cutting the head off the hydra.

It was time to kill Silas Scythe.

Wrapping my hands around his neck was easy—they settled there as if they were molded for exactly that. Applying the pressure wasn't much harder. Seconds ticked on like hours as I slowly squeezed tighter, watching his face grow pale and his eyes grow wider.

It's over, said some small voice in my head. You won. You're free. It's over.

The scream of the alarm and the angry red of the flashing light had faded; in their wake was a silent and monochrome world of absolutes. I could feel the cartilage of Scythe's trachea beneath my thumbs—all it would take to crush it was a fraction of mutant strength.

I didn't notice the hand shaking my shoulder until it was jostling me. I turned to see Fang at my side, saying my name, looking, of all things, concerned. I could sense the flock behind me. The animalistic rage faded immediately.

There was no need for discussion. Fang was, very simply and objectively, making sure that I knew what I was doing. I was ready to respond when I noticed the small audience behind us.

"Max?" Nudge said in a shaky voice.

Just like that, I was sixteen-year-old heart-of-gold, code-of-conduct Max, the non-killer and moral-compass-wielder.

I took a deep breath. Everything's fine, I thought. Jeb, Whitecoat-turned-father-turned-question mark? Just got shot in the head a few feet away from you. Anne, pseudo-mom who helped save Fang from certain death? Brains are spattered on the far wall of the room. Also, you almost killed a man with your bare hands. Just another normal Tuesday.

Suddenly, the situation was muted; we stood there, stupidly looking around at each other, trying to figure out what the hell was next on the to-do list.

Fang circled around to stand in front of me, reaching a hand down and hauling me to my feet. A dizzy spell came over me and I leaned against him, trying not to totally lose my mind. I noticed I was shivering. Then I realized it was probably aftershocks from being incessantly tased.

It wasn't until Iggy said, "Well, this seems complicated," that the tension broke and I realized the urgency of the situation.

"Okay." My voice sounded like my larynx had been put through a blender. I cleared my throat, and tried again. "Okay. We need to think."

Iggy coughed. "I get the feeling that things are pretty tense right now, but if anybody could tell me what the hell is going on, that would be great."

Nobody said anything. Fang and I shared a significant look. He'd stopped me because he thought he needed to. To spare some sacred part of me—to keep my soul pure. The problem was, Silas Scythe had to die.

"Okay," I said again, mostly to myself more than anyone else. "Okay. Think." My balance was back, so I started pacing, hyperaware of Fang's hawklike gaze on me. "Any genius ideas?"

"I'd be happy to help," said Iggy in a more annoyed voice this time, "if I had a single iota of a clue as to what the f—"

"Later." It was supposed to be harsh—an order—but sounded more like a plea.

I didn't notice that my breaths were quick and shallow until Fang stopped me from pacing and put a hand on my shoulder. His eyes met mine again in that same piercing gaze.

He looked so unruffled. Secure. Solid. His hair was tousled, his lip was bleeding, and his clothes were dusty, but no part of him looked affected by any of this. It wasn't fair. It felt wrong that I'd been the one in charge for as long as I could remember; I felt totally incapable of stringing a sentence together, of properly mentating, of not coming absolutely unraveled at the drop of a hat.

His eyebrows moved a quarter of an inch, proving that he knew me well enough to read me perfectly. His eyes softened. We'll talk later, he was telling me.

The tenderness almost broke me. I wanted to pull him aside, to speak only to him, but with four pairs of genetically enhanced ears (one of which belonged to Iggy, who was no longer human as far as I was concerned) it was impossible.

"Fang." My voice was frustratingly weak and timid. I struggled to recall a time I'd felt this discombobulated. "He has to die."

I thought of Angel, who'd just been held in captivity, likely starving and exhausted and emotionally damaged; of Gazzy, who was still only ten years old; of Nudge—sunny, serendipitous Nudge. These children who'd spent their entire lives dealing with unimaginable terrors. Who'd just watched two human beings have their brains blown out not twenty feet from them.

Scythe was writhing on the floor, barely conscious and looking near to death's doorstep as it was. Part of me wanted to leave him there to let him suffer in agony until he died alone.

"I'll do it," Iggy blurted.

"No," I said. "No. It has to be me."

"Bullshit," Iggy grunted. "Max—"

"It has to be me." I looked to Fang. "Get them out of here. Then you," I said, gesturing with my chin to Iggy, "are going to take the kids and get as far away as you can. Find a hotel somewhere over the border in New Hampshire."

"Derry," Fang said immediately. "There's a Days Inn there."

Somehow, I was unsurprised that he knew this.

"Fang—"

"I'll double back and wait in the HVAC. I know how to get us out."

"I don't like this," Nudge said nervously.

"I don't either, but it is what it is," I admitted. "Split."

"Wait—" said Angel, moving to hug me, but I put my hands up.

"No. No hugs. No goodbyes. The fighting is over. We're safe," I said, and even just the words coming out of my mouth sent a surge of relief through me.

Angel took a step back and met my eyes, looking somewhere stuck between indignant and scared.

"See you soon, chickadee," I said, and turned around so I didn't have to watch them leave one by one. Because no matter what, every time they walked away, it felt like it might be the last time.

The second the sound of them clambering away began to fade, my hands found Scythe's neck again in slow motion, applied pressure, and did not let go. An indeterminate amount of time passed before I noticed the blood bubbling from his lips. My stomach rolled. Once again, I was watching the life slowly leak from this man. I'd watched two other people die today, but this one was different.

This one was directly because of me.

"I'll see you on the other side," Scythe gurgled. One of his hands came up shakily to point to the back of his neck.

He was referencing my expiration date.

"You're bluffing," I spat.

He laughed. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he dissolved into a painful looking coughing fit. Then distantly—detachedly, as if through a lens—I watched the light in his eyes die as his body stilled eerily beneath me.

I'd done it. It was over. Silas Scythe was dead.

A feeling of unprecedented euphoria surged through me. And by unprecedented, I mean unprecedented. For weeks, we'd been hot on the trail of the top dog in all of this: the person responsible for years of suffering. We'd unearthed clues and covered more miles across the country than we'd covered in over a year.

That top dog—Silas Scythe—was dead beneath me.

I felt like I was on top of the world. I stood up, brushed my hands off on my jeans, and let a refreshingly clear breath of air fill my lungs. My nerves were still twitching from the suped-up taser he'd used over and over and I'd just killed a man with my bare hands, but all I could think was, We're free. We're finally free.

My moment of untouchability was short lived, as it so often is. The sirens stopped sounding and the room was plunged into darkness. Behind me, one of the doors slid open. I opened my mouth to speak, but it was useless.

Because at that moment, the room exploded.

When I opened my eyes, the first thing I was acutely aware of was Iggy's face, the expression on which snapped from downright worried to positively relieved when I met his blind gaze.

I said the first thing that came to my mind: "Hey."

Eloquent. Well-placed. Like, Howdy!

Iggy sighed deeply before putting a hand to his face. He did not take it away.

"It is an absolute miracle," he said, leaning back on his haunches in what looked like pure exhaustion, "that you aren't in a hospital right now."

My body felt impossibly tight and the familiar twitches of aftershocks shot through me. The popcorn ceiling overhead and the lumpy sofa beneath me indicated that we'd likely made it to the Days Inn in Derry in some sort of miraculous series of events that I was not privy to. I groaned lowly without meaning to and tried to sit up—only to be pushed right back down by a pair of strong, familiar hands.

I looked up and saw Fang. His face was tight, but he didn't say anything.

"Stay down," Iggy said. He hadn't moved. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen him this drained.

A wave of nausea rolled over me and I struggled to push myself back up.

"Max—"

"Dizzy," I muttered. "Gonna throw up."

Fang's hands were on my shoulders again, this time gently guiding me upright as Iggy shoved a small trash bin into my hands. I gagged but nothing came up. Another pitiful moan escaped me.

My face was half in the can and my ears were ringing. I was vaguely aware of Fang and Iggy talking, but I couldn't focus—my entire body still felt like a live wire, jerking ever so slightly, like an eel stalking prey.

"Max?"

I lurched out of my daze. Fang was kneeling in front of the couch, looking marginally worse than even Iggy.

"I'm fine," I said instinctively. I gave a tiny, involuntary twitch; he glared at me.

"You are not fine," said Iggy tiredly, pulling himself from the floor and plopping next to me. "Absolutely not."

The room was still spinning, but my senses slowly came back to me. I could feel Fang's hand on my knee, smell the must from the cushion of the armchair next to me, hear the dim humming of the radiator as it pushed heat into the stagnant air.

I noticed at this moment that there were only three flock members present. I felt my heart spring to a gallop.

"Where are the kids?"

"Sleeping," Fang answered. "Everyone's okay. They wanted to wait for you."

"Wait for me?"

Fang's mouth hardened into a straight line. "It's been a few hours."

"Few hours!" Iggy snorted. "Few hours—?"

"Iggy," Fang said in warning.

My eyes found the window—it was dark out. It had been dark out when we'd stormed Vector. I'm not a genius, but it wasn't hard to figure out that this meant it had either truly been a few hours or something a little closer to twenty-four.

"A day?"

Fang eyed me levelly, looking for a fleeting second like he wouldn't answer me.

"Sixteen hours," he said bracingly, but I was too tired to care.

My bearings slowly came back to me over the next few minutes. I gave another little electric-shock-jerk. He tried to hide it, but I knew him too well to miss Fang's face hardening even more.

"You've been doing that since we pulled you out of there. Even when you were unconscious."

There was nothing to say in response to that. I tried to direct my thoughts anywhere but back to wishing that Scythe would just kill me and put me out of my misery but failed miserably.

"Yeah, well, he tased her about twenty times," Iggy said, words dripping with loathing.

"That thing wasn't a taser."

Iggy squinted blindly at me. "What do you mean?"

"There's no way. That pain—I don't—" I swallowed, trying to bite back a full-blown panic that I hadn't anticipated. "It just—it wasn't a taser."

"What was it?"

I tracked Iggy as he stood and made his way to the kitchen before closing my eyes and shaking my head. "Search me."

He rummaged for something in the mini fridge. "How long were you in the room?" he asked, motioning with spooky accuracy at Fang.

"Right before Max agreed to kill Jeb and Anne. I had to wait for the right time to jump him." His eyes met mine and it was plain in his expression that he felt guilty for not stopping Scythe earlier.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Don't do that. I'm fine."

An aftershock rippled through me. Fang's hand balled into a fist.

"Twenty times?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"Iggy's exaggerating."

Iggy, who was now zapping something in the microwave, laughed drily.

"Am I? Because it was enough times for me to lose count."

"It doesn't matter," I said. "Drop it."

The fogginess had seemed to totally clear from my brain, and the newfound clarity brought with it a surprising amount of pain. A quick inventory of my body revealed that everywhere hurt.

"Why do I feel like I got sucked into a boat propeller?"

"Well, some sort of explosive was their last-ditch effort to finish you off," said Iggy.

"I remember that part."

"Not sure why they wanted to finish you off. Maybe they thought Scythe was still alive at that point."

"Or that you knew too much," Fang added. "All of us are huge liabilities to anyone involved there."

I snorted. "They think we'd open our mouths?"

Iggy shrugged. "Anyway, Fang heard the bang and came back. Not sure what their bomb of choice was, though. Couldn't figure it out."

"Pipe bomb, maybe." Fang shrugged. "Seems a little sloppy for them, but who knows."

"So I'm totally full of shrapnel, then?"

Iggy leaned back against the arm of the couch and folded his long arms behind him, his stony, sightless gaze fixed somewhere on the ceiling.

"No," he said. "You were full of shrapnel. Nothing a pair of tweezers and some isopropyl alcohol couldn't fix. Most of it was minor stuff. One of the tables got blasted into you though, Fang said. He had to pry it off of you."

"Is that why I feel concussed?"

"No," Iggy said again. "That's why you are concussed."

I looked to Fang. "You're quiet."

"He's concerned," said Iggy. "Well, we all were. Are. Obviously. But—you know." He gestured vaguely to Fang. "You know how he gets. Stoic."

Fang cast a lethal stare in Iggy's direction.

"Seriously, though. Are you okay?" Iggy's voice was tender. I didn't realize he was talking to me until I came up for air from the depths of my bowl of carbohydrates.

"Me?"

"Yes, you," he replied with a massive roll of his eyes.

As touching as the victim treatment was, I was all set with being babied.

"You guys can back off. I'm fine. Seriously."

My muscles spasmed again. Fang's eyes narrowed. Iggy, who had apparently achieved dolphin levels of echolocation and sensory awareness, frowned deeply.

"It's nothing," I said in warning.

"Nothing?" Iggy's voice was incredulous. "Cut the shit, Max."

"I'm fine," I said, stabbing my fork into the last piece of tortellini. The hunger-induced dizziness was starting to fade, so I felt at least a fraction more like my old, chipper self. "I've had worse."

"Like hell you have," Iggy snorted. "You're awfully twitchy."

"You would be too!" I snapped, ready for an argument, but Iggy either had nothing to say back or knew better than to.

"Max?"

This was a new voice. I looked up and saw Nudge peering from the doorway of the bedroom. Gazzy stood behind her, and I knew Angel wasn't very far behind. I'd made the mistake of raising my voice, waking them up from what was undoubtedly a peaceful slumber.

In two steps Nudge had closed the distance between us and wrapped her arms around me in the kind of hug that made you never want to let go. Gazzy and Angel threw themselves at the pair of us and we melted into one giant mutant hug.

"I'm okay," I said, stroking Angel's hair, who had started to cry. "Everything's okay. We're safe."

When we finally broke apart, Nudge recounted their side of the story. Jamie had guided them to the entryway and promised to stall anyone in pursuit of us. Nudge, Iggy, and Angel had gone ahead, leaving Fang as their ace in the hole.

"…And then we got out and we heard this massive explosion, so Fang turned around and went back in, and when he pulled you out you looked…" At this, Nudge trailed off.

"Like you belonged in a hospital," Iggy finished. "Like I said earlier."

"Then we came here, and now it's all over. For good." Gazzy finished.

Now it's all over. For good.

The weight of this statement was not lost on me. It seemed like every few minutes the reality hit me again: we were free.

Gazzy carefully avoiding my gaze is what jogged my memory.

"What I'd really like to know is what on earth you thought you were doing," I said, glaring at him.

He flushed and refused to look at me.

"How did you possibly get those cameras down?" I pressed.

"I—I found the plans to the building," he said, shrugging. "I just had to google a little bit to figure out how to make the system go haywire. It wasn't hard."

My stomach rolled. The plans to the building. Of course. How had I been so stupid? All that time he'd spent "playing games" on our laptop to pass the time had been for reconnaissance.

"That wasn't okay!" I said testily. "You could've been killed!"

"I know."

"We all could've been killed!"

"I know."

"You're not a little kid anymore—you have to use your head! We walked straight into a trap!"

"I know!"

Tears had sprung to his eyes now, threatening to spill over onto his rage-reddened cheeks. There was a brief, deafening silence.

"Why didn't you come to me?"

"You were stalling!" he yelled. "We were sitting around for days not doing anything!"

A feeling of dread settled deep in my chest. Gazzy's face reflected that he knew he'd hit below the belt.

"Gazzy, we needed a plan," I countered feebly.

"And I was trying to plan for the right time to bust in! I needed to save Angel, Max, she's my sister! My real sister!"

My real sister. Like I wasn't his real sister. Like we weren't his real family.

"We could've made a plan together!" I shouted, ignoring a pang of hurt. "Gazzy, you cannot go barging into trouble without help like that!"

"You did!" he pointed out.

"That's because that's what I do!"

"Yeah, well, why can't it be what I do, too?"

"Because I have to protect all of you!"

My voice broke at the end. I tried and failed to smother a chest-heaving sob. It was too late. The impending breakdown had arrived.

I'd almost lost them. The entire mission had almost been a failure. The moment I thought Scythe had shot Angel replayed in my mind over and over again like a broken film reel before swapping over to the overwhelming feeling of holy fucking shit what am I going to do that I'd felt when I thought Fang was dead.

But Fang wasn't dead. He was here, pulling me into his arms. Relief washed over me so powerfully that the floodgates burst. What felt like a century of constant stress fell from my shoulders and tumbled from my mouth in gasping hysterics. Fang's hand stroked my back and I felt the rest of the flock crowd around us in the sort of group hug we hadn't had since the kids were little.

"It's all over," Angel said in her sweet voice, echoing her brother. "For good." The words lilted like a melody in the air, and for the first time in my life, it felt like maybe—just maybe—everything would be okay.

The feeling stuck with me until I lay back on the couch that night and heard Scythe's words, just as real as they had been as I choked the life out of him: I'll see you on the other side.