A/N: Man, you guys are lucky I'm not a perfectionist. Now that I know the full story and where we're going, I have half a mind to take the whole thing down and start over. But I won't. This is still a seat-of-my-pants type story. I'll edit one day. Today, I will try to write myself out of this tangle of plot twists. I'm excited for what's coming!

I'm sorry it's confusing! I hope it's a good confusing. I promise I have answers to your questions. Thanks for reading.

Warning: Language and typos.

Disclaimer: James Patterson owns the Maximum Ride characters and all canon people, places or plots.

M

As you can imagine, the six of us aren't really feeling extremely talkative or enthused after all that. Alana doesn't let us make a break for it, though.

We discuss what we can with her but can't admit to knowing any details about any of Jeb's ominous threats. We haven't seen the man in years, and never knew anything about what he was up to when he wasn't hunting us. I promise myself that I'll ask Val whatever she knows as soon as I can. Not that I expect her to have any recent insight into Jeb's goals, either. She's only known him longer.

We're just as floored as she is, clearly. We have no idea if he has any newer labs set up, makeshift or hidden and working under fronts. That's what Alana is most worried about. He hinted at having a team, having a plan. Alana assures us they have an entire team dedicated to looking for a new location, and Jeb is on a tighter lockdown than ever.

Alana has Nudge, Gazzy and Fang sign their agreements to our pre-existing contract. She's brought me a third computer, as she promised in her texts from the weekend. She seems determined to stay out of our way, still, and isn't putting any pressure on us as we process everything from the meeting.

Having no idea what is connected to the time travel or not, we take our copy of all the evidence Alana shared and head home, promising to be in touch again once we've finished with the most recent batches. Alana takes her opportunity to lay out a heavy warning moving forward—she warns each of us levelly about the documents that lie ahead.

"I'm serious," she says. "Call me if you need anything. You don't have to finish something if it's too much. Trust me. We have him either way."

I don't even want to think about the impending trial. The interviews, the days in court and days of reliving the worst, most incriminating evidence that we can corroborate. It's all so much, and it seems like it'll be way too long before it's all over.

"Alana," I say, catching her off guard as she pulls on her coat. The others are also getting ready to leave—Fang has the briefcase bag Alana brought on his arm. "I want to see him."

No one says anything. The kids keep pulling their coats on, but I know Iggy heard me because he rolls his eyes dramatically as he zips up. Fang doesn't say anything. I think, with this part, he understands. Even if he doesn't support it, he gets why I want to get to see him, myself. Ask him things, myself.

She watches me levelly for a moment, and then relents, nodding and making a note in her journal.

"As soon as possible," I press, waiting for verbal confirmation.

Alana only looks over at Fang for a moment before looking back at me, nodding solidly. "Okay. I'll call you when I get it set up."

When we finally get the go ahead, we hustle, moving out of the building and across the street into a semi-deserted parking lot behind a strip mall.

Nudge sprints ahead across the asphalt, wings flinging out as she lets them free for the first time since we've arrived. She turns around and jogs backwards a moment, a shaken, "What the actual hell?" coming out of her mouth in surprise.

"Didn't expect any of that," Gazzy agrees, nodding his head with wide eyes. "I still feel gross after hearing Jeb talk like that."

I nod at him grimly. "Me, too."

"What I don't understand is—"

"Nudge," Fang says sternly to Nudge, still tense as hell. He nods forward. His wings are out, too, and he's itching to leave. I can just tell. "Not here. Let's get moving."

The kids don't argue, and I don't either. We take off without another word, climbing silently above the clouds and heading home. Everything will feel better, hopefully, when we're home. There we can try to go through everything again and draw some conclusions. We have so much more still to go through—more stuff that's sensitive and emotionally-stressing, considering Alana's warning.

I wonder if it's plain stupid to let the kids go through this stuff. Maybe it's wrong. Maybe it's exactly what Jeb wanted.

He sounded angry to be caught; that wasn't ever the goal. But he also made it clear he has plans in place for everything; a team to back him up. They have their orders.

That must be what our future selves are trying to stop. Whatever he's got his team working on. Whatever is going to happen now, since he's been caught and his plan, foiled.

But why is it that we need to travel back? Do we not stop it the first time? This time?

We already know about it, so we should have no problem dealing with it. And if that's not why the future Flock is meddling with time…then, why?

I gulp, looking back at my Flock, flanking me on either side in a loose formation as we fly home. It's a short flight, and it's still daytime—just a cold, cloudy day. I've never thought about the future so much until now. I have no idea what to think, from what I've seen so far. I can only hope we don't destroy ourselves messing with time.

I wonder what drives us to do it in the first place.

We get home a half hour later, securing ourselves inside and scattering to our own spaces a minute to detox. I notify them all with a shout that we'll convene in a few minutes downstairs to go over everything and get our heads straight. Nudge hangs around while I set the security alarm after everyone else has gone upstairs.

I pull everything out and spread it out on the kitchen table, Nudge helping me silently. We push aside the documents we'd strewn about this morning. My mind is racing, still digesting and questioning information we've discovered today. I glance around at our new evidence spread out, then back over at Nudge, who's patiently watching me.

"I'm fine, go change. Get comfy," I say gently, looking over at her. She smiles at me reassuringly. I don't even know how to return to the gesture. I pat her shoulder and move past her upstairs, towards my room.

The clone thing is huge. If anything, it's become so twisted and bizzare and unanswerable that I feel better about my decision to just ignore it. I'll probably never know, at this point, and so the best I can do is continue what I've been doing—swallowing it down and pushing it away. Jeb basically played roulette with a bunch of Maxes, and I'm lucky that I'm even left standing.

Max is born. Max is cloned five times. Two clones survive, and the original Max experiment survives.

Three Maxes.

One is shipped to Jeb, to start testing with the Flock, being raised as Max. One, sent to train with Erasers and learn about the Flock. Max II.

The third…

Me.

Kept as a blank canvas, until Jeb was ready to use me.

Well, just—fuck that. This isn't something I can try to cope with. I don't even know how.

Jeb also messed with our ages. At least, for us oldest three, he purposefully told us we were years younger than we were. Why? Because he could? Because we had no way to know the truth? Because he wanted to stay an authoritative, father figure?

Not that that's the most devastating revelation from the tapes. I can cope with being a few years older—I'd never fully trusted my age or birthday as accurate, anyway. That's not what's constantly making my stomach tumble.

It's Jeb's careless admission about me. Replacement Max. Reproductive functions perfectly intact. He noted my relationship with Fang—that shit fucking mattered to him. At eleven. Hell, it still does.

And he's delighted—fuck, he should be.

Even if the Flock didn't follow Jeb's plan, Fang and I have continued on his predicted course, as expected. We're clearly doing exactly what Jeb had always hoped. Not that we're having kids, but we're very clearly capable, very clearly together. The media focuses on it too much to go unnoticed. Even if Jeb hasn't had eyes or intel on us for years, he'd know Fang and I are still together romantically.

I really don't want to think about that, though. I'm embarrassed and grossed out and just all around confused, wondering if there are things I shouldn't do only because I know Jeb wanted me to do them. Wondering if trying to live like that, trying to avoid anything Jeb expected of me, would just ruin me anyway.

My wings are aching, since I hadn't planned on using them so much after such exertion the day before. I rummage through my dresser, looking for a soft pair of leggings. I also grab a large, roomy sweatshirt. I've just tugged it over my head when my door opens a crack.

"Hey," I say, looking up at Fang as he emerges through the doorway. He turns to me, silent, eyes wide, face urgently set.

"Fang?"

"Are we okay?"

My heart feels like it's just battling to burst out of my ribcage. I hope we're okay. I don't know what he's thinking. I can see why he'd wonder, after everything we know and everything we've seen.

"We're okay," I say softly, reaching up. I touch his cheek and he touches my hand, letting his cover mine. I pull him down to sit next to me on my bed and he keeps my hand in his.

He nods, content with my answer. Trusting me.

"Are you okay?"

I shrug. I look down at my lap, frowning, thinking about something to say that's honest enough but won't set off any alarms for Fang. I don't come up with much.

"I don't know. Maybe we'll never know the whole truth. I think I can cope with that. I'm…trying not to be hard on myself," I say eventually, under his gaze.

He nods again, turning my hand over in his and tracing the lines on my palm. I bite it back for as long as I can, sitting in a relative comfortable silence. A beat or two passes before I ask.

"Did your boss respond to you?"

He just shrugs. He doesn't get angry, but he doesn't really put much energy into responding to the topic.

"Haven't looked."

I chew my cheek, just watching him. He's watching our hands. He's covered his bases—checked on us, checked on me—and then immediately dove into overthinking. I have to refrain from rolling my eyes. It's ridiculous to watch us switch in and out of these roles of sanity and chaos.

"Fang? Wanna talk about it?"

He looks up to watch me. His face is so troubled, and it's silly to say this because this isn't the first time, but—it pains me to see him in turmoil like this. Just exhausted, beaten down, lost. We all feel it, we all show it in our own ways. Fang guards himself well with tension and paranoia, but when the walls come down…

He's just as shaken as the rest of us. As I am, maybe.

"About what?" he scoffs, breathing an incredulous laugh.

"The clone thing," I offer emptily, shrugging because I don't know what else to say about that one. "Jeb hinting at having back-up? Jeb hinting that he wanted us to produce more experiments for him?"

His jaw sets stubbornly, but he says nothing. I know this shit weighs as heavily on him as it does me. I know he isn't untouchable. But I'm shocked to see him overwhelmed by the monstrosity of it—I'd thought Fang already knew Jeb's evilness. He'd acted like he knew it.

I guess he never imagined something as unbelievably evil as this.

"Screw this," Fang says suddenly. "Max…everything in me wants to run from this shit."

I know that. Fang's always been that way. For as fierce and strong he is, he's never wanted to do any of this. He yearns for normalcy, but not even the way Nudge does—not a normal life, with school and work and normal friends, but safety. Safety and security and the option to live a peaceful life.

Jeb's focus on our relationship makes sense. It always has. In all honesty, I never thought about it when I was a kid, obviously, but of course Jeb had wanted us to reproduce. He definitely wanted us to have a bond stronger than any other pair in the Flock. He tested us harder, more often together, and studied our interactions to the detail.

We were probably useless to him, in the long-run, if we couldn't reproduce.

"Jeb's goals don't matter," I remind him. "If we're okay, if we're happy…that's all that matters. We're doing this for us. It's going to be okay."

I look up at him, hoping to see that my words have helped ease his tension. I know how he feels. I just want to be able to provide some kind of comfort to him as we navigate all of Jeb's wretched immorality. To all of my Flock. I want to protect them from this, but the truth is, there is just no way to do that.

He nods down at me, still looking thoughtful. I know I'm throwing his own advice back at him, and I really do believe it. Now, after hearing Jeb and understanding on a newer level how pointless and painful his entire plan for us was, I know that the only thing that matters is how we move on.

I don't know all the answers, I can barely keep my mind at ease, and I know there's more to come. But I need to keep these kids okay. I need to make sure Fang's okay.

I pull in a long breath, squeezing his fingers before dropping them. I stand, stretching my sore back gently. I smile at him as he stands beside me.

One step at a time, we keep moving. After a few minutes the kids reconvene in the kitchen, showered and changed from the afternoon's activities. It's almost four o'clock, now, and Iggy is in the kitchen, smelling subtly of smoke, chopping veggies in the kitchen.

"We're doing stir-fry," he advertises to the room. "Max, get me some wine. I need to celebrate—I just found out I'm legal."

I roll my eyes, heading over to the counter to grab the half-open bottle on the counter. I pour him some wordlessly, not arguing. Nudge says nothing, sidles up to Iggy and starts chopping peppers beside him with a spare knife. He taps her hand quickly in thanks and slides a bowl her way for the pieces.

Done pouring Iggy's wine, I sit at the dining table again and start looking through the documents Alana had printed. I look into the one with the birth records, first, and behind the six documents from Jeb's files, there's a letter with FBI letterhead.

I pull it out and scan it. Alana had them draft up official documents for the Flock—accurate to the data in Jeb's documents. Apparently, his files are enough for her, and behind the letter in the folder are six actual birth certificates Other documents clipped to each. I hand them over to Fang, who's standing by the table, still holding the bat. He looks down at them and then back at me, eyebrow raised.

"Jeb never had us legally documented," I say, shrugging. "Alana got us updated records. Non-driving IDs and such. Birth certificates. Legit."

"How considerate," Fang mutters, turning away to peer out the back windows.

Gazzy comes over to the table, tossing down his hardbound notebook again.

"Max, I have some questions." He sits down beside me, looking over at me with a serious look.

"Join the club," I mumble, looking away from him to glance through the folder once more. I close it up with all the documents inside and set it to the side. I pull the other folder out. I flip it open, see the creation reports for the clones. I flip the folder back closed without digging.

I don't really need to pour over those right now.

"Max, listen to me," Gazzy says with conviction, getting annoyed that I won't theorize about time travel with him. "How would we ever know we needed to build a device if we didn't see the device?"

I shrug, looking down at him next to me. "I don't know, Gazzy. You'd already drawn in your notebook."

He nods, eyes wide. "Yeah—with no intention of ever trying to make it real. It was practically a doodle. I'd still think that if we didn't see Fang use it in front of us."

He's very shaken, and I already knew that. I knew that when I was basically interrogating him after my own experience with my future self. But now he's seen it himself, this morning. And he's still just so lost on the whole thing, it's almost hard for me to watch. He's putting way too much pressure on himself to see the whole picture.

I put a hand on his shoulder, tilting my head at him. "Gaz. We don't know what happens next. We're still figuring it out. And it seems like it'll be a while before we know everything, so just pace yourself."

He frowns, hating my answer. "Why do you say that? A long time before we know everything?"

I sigh. "Because Future Max and Future Fang both mentioned not telling us what they're doing. They're trying to shelter us from knowing anything too early."

Gazzy looks at me, still looking confused. "It doesn't make sense. What wouldn't they be able to tell us?"

"Please, try not to fry your brain on this one, Gaz."

I reach for the cassettes, pulling one from the stack and stuffing it into the tape player. As Iggy and Nudge throw together a quick stir fry for dinner, the others join me in going through everything from Alana one more time. As painstaking as it is, we need to make sure we note anything that Jeb says that might be helpful or insightful.

The recordings are eerie and disturbing, but not entirely helpful. I wish I knew a better way to decode Jeb and his vague threats. Iggy was right, when we first heard the tapes—Jeb is acting like he still has the upper hand. He's mostly smug, confident. He's either proud of something he's done or he's got something lined up to happen.

"What could Jeb be planning?" I think aloud, jotting notes as Jeb rattles on the tape about the clones. "If he really has a team helping him still…what is he planning?"

"End of the world? Like he always promised," Gazzy shrugs, picking at a fray in the cover of his notebook. I make a face at him, looking over his head at Fang with a horrified expression.

"I really hope not," I say to him. "I never knew what he meant by that—saving the world."

"Max, think less literally," Iggy calls from his station at the kitchen counter. He's not even joking, his face is dead serious. "I'm starting to think Jeb's entire career has been fueled by delusions and unchecked by all his peers."

Angel scoffs, sitting on a barstool behind me, legs swinging. "Unchecked or encouraged?"

Fang's shaking his head, re-reading the files I've tossed aside already.

"Are you the only one he cloned? Why? Why so many times?"

I grimace at him, shuffling with the next tape. "Because Max was his pride and joy. I don't know."

Fang looks at me oddly when I talk about myself in the third person, and I avoid his gaze. I'm tired of trying to navigate this, tired of new craziness being introduced.

"Gazzy, try to get a timeline going—when they travel back, date and time. Details they gave us. Anything you remember. Anything you think of."

Gazzy looks thrilled to finally have a task, and relieved to be able to direct all his energy into the time travel situation. He gets to work immediately, throwing open his notebook. I look up at Fang, frowning. I rewind the tape a replay the part that worries me the most.

"And now, because of Max, we all get to lose."

Fang rolls his eyes, dropping into a chair across the table from me. "Of course he'd blame you. Doesn't mean he's speaking the truth."

"Blame me for what?" I ponder, removing the tape and setting it aside. "For him getting captured? For the plan falling apart?"

Fang doesn't have an answer. He's already sliding the third cassette into the player, sliding the door closed and pressing play. I lean forward and press the fast forward, not needing to hear Jeb's claim about vessels and clones again. Instead, a minute in, I press play and we catch:

"That's what you don't get. I did create the mission, the plan, but there's a whole team beside me. They have their orders."

"We have your team. We have almost everyone that's ever done business with you shut down, it's over."

"It's over when I say it's over."

I stare at Fang hopelessly, waiting for the last cryptic bit.

Jeb's voice filters through the room, taunting mercilessly.

"Anyways, what does Max think of all this? I know she's finally seeing my files, after all these years. It doesn't stop her. Despite everything. And maybe now it's over. But, I guess we'll see."

I stop the player suddenly, scribbling what he said on the sheet in front of me. Nudge groans from across the counter.

"Please tell me that's the only time we have to replay those," she says, sounding bothered. "I do not enjoy his vibe."

I ignore her and focus back on Fang, repeating to him lowly: "'It doesn't stop her. Despite everything.'"

"He's acting like he knows the outcome," Fang says, shrugging. "Cocky? Delusional? Trying to intimidate?"

Jeb is speaking like he knows something none of us know. Something other than his last remaining lab or his final plans now that he's caught. Something about me.

It doesn't stop her. Despite everything.

"Holy shit," Gazzy says from beside me, causing me to jump a bit. I expect him to be looking at his own notes about time travel, but he's not. He's glancing excitedly between Fang and I, his blue eyes wide and urgent.

"Maybe he does. Maybe he figured it out," he says hurriedly, finger tapping quickly on his drawing of his time travel device in his notebook. He looks back at me, shaking his head, like he's in disbelief at his own assertion.

"Maybe he does know the outcome."