Note: This chapter is rather short so I will post Chapter 6 as well
Chapter Five
"Where is Iggy?" Gazzy asked, looking at each flock member. All of them slowly started to wear a look a sheer terror as they realized that Iggy was not with them.
"Does anyone remember grabbing him when we took off?" Max asked, her once sleepy eyes wide with the discovery that one of her flock was missing.
Everyone shook their head.
"Where was he last?" Nudge answered that question "Guarding the door with Fang." All eyes turned to Fang.
He shifted uncomfortably under their gaze.
"Well…?" Gazzy asked, longing to return to making bombs with Iggy.
"He-uh… well when the-uh whitecoat came to the door he sent us in different directions to… different labs." He said "I thought he'd find his way back to the… control room, but then the alarm sounded and-"
"So he's still in Itex?" Nudge asked, encouraging the usually silent boy to keep on talking.
Fang looked at her and nodded, not speaking another word, gaining a scowl from Nudge.
"But he could've gotten out" Gazzy said, making all eyes turn to him "I mean… he was wearing a lab coat so no one would know he was… an experiment" he said the word 'experiment' as if it were some foul word that should never be said again.
"Yeah… but Jeb could've been there" Max said. The hair on the back of their necks prickled when Max mentioned Jeb "Last we saw him was at Anne's; Anne is his boss, she works in Itex, he's more than likely going to be in there than back at school"
"He still could've gotten out" Gazzy muttered, his once high hopes now made low by Max's words.
Max held out her hand to Gazzy, Gazzy looked at it, confused.
"The file" Max said. Gazzy grinned sheepishly when he realized he was clutching the file they had gotten from Itex, since he had grabbed it from the printer. He handed the stack to her and asked the question on his mind
"When are we going to find Iggy?"
"When we know what we're up against" Max replied smoothly.
They all sat on the cool rock, looking at Max, all-eager to go find their missing comrade except Fang, who just seemed as dark as usual. Max handed a stack to Nudge, Fang, Gazzy, and Angel before flipping through her own. There were no pictures whatsoever, there were descriptions however.
"Dark hair, gold eyes, gaunt face" Nudge was saying from a paper in her stack "about 5'10", lanky, but muscled" she looked up at Max "There's only one of them"
"Well that makes life easier for us" Max said, before flipping through the pages once again.
"How can they have so much information on one thing?" Total asked as he stepped on one of the papers, leaving a small paw print behind. Gazzy shrugged, not saying anything as he looked, page after page, he grew more eager to find Iggy. All of his papers said something about a rebellious personality, and that this thing was scheduled for a 'reeducation' class three weeks from now. He finished the small stack he had received quickly, Angel was long finished and was playing with Total on the other side of the rock. Fang was leaning against a tree with his arms crossed over his chest while Max and Nudge were consulting over what they found in their papers.
"It says this thing has put ten whitecoats in the hospital, fatally wounded, one has been put in the ground. It's wounded five Erasers and it's scheduled to be reeducated." Nudge said quickly, having to repeat herself for Max.
Gazzy looked at them, Could they be any slower?, he thought, clenching his hand into a fist.
He was frustrated, the only other time he had felt like this was in New York when he was tired, tired of Erasers who had attacked them earlier on. If he was frustrated then, then what he felt now was beyond frustration and anger, a new feeling, a new emotion.
He snapped out of it when Max stood up from the rock, her face stern and solemn.
"The last time we saw this thing it was in a tank, guarded, and in a different form. It's probably still in its tank and seeing that it needs to be reeducated, it probably wouldn't harm Iggy if it found him" She said , giving little hope to Gazzy, but at least it was some amount of hope.
"So we can go now?" Fang, amazingly, asked, gaining attention from Nudge, Max and Gazzy. Angel was still playing with Total on the other side of the rock, out of sight from all of them except Nudge who was close to the edge of the rock. Angel looked over the edge, a grin on her face, but then scowled "Do we have to leave now? I was having fun" her lower lip jutted out and her eyes grew watery and wide.
Taking note of the queue all of them turned away from the Bambi eyes Angel was performing.
"No, we're leaving now, to find Iggy" Max said spreading her wings, still looking away from Angel who was probably probing her mind.
"No, we leave now, that is that" she ran, then jumped off the rock and beat her wings to become air borne. Nudge followed, then Gazzy, Fang took off at a stand still, then Angel who grabbed Total and hugged him to her chest. She whispered something to him that was drowned out by the wind once she unfurled her wings and flew.
So now they were off to find Iggy, wherever he may be, and off to confront something they had not expected, something that would leave them completely dumbfounded, even though they knew, deep inside their hearts, knew what exactly was to happen.