Hello! I updated a little quicker, didn't I? Okay, just to let you know- in this chapter, I say tiger 'pack' even though tigers don't travel in packs. They travel alone, but this is a group and I didn't want to just say group, so I said 'pack.' And maybe 'pride' would have fit better, but only lions travel in prides, so I didn't do that. Uh, I also say 'tigrine' in this. I did some research kinda stuff and I think tigrine is right, but if any of you know, please tell me and I'll fix it or something. 'Cause tigrine doesn't sound as cool as 'avian' or 'lupine' and it makes it really obvious that it's a tiger. So, please help me with that. Hmm… anything else? Thanks for reviewing… please review more… I don't really have anything else to say, so we'll get on with the story.
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"Do you think that you can do anything you want- trespass, intrude, and just get away with it?" I stared at the young boy who had grinned at me earlier. He seemed to be the leader. "I mean, did you honestly think we wouldn't catch you?" he continued.
"I told you this was a bad idea," muttered Fang from behind me.
The boy took a step forward. A malicious smile formed on his face as he continued walking toward me. Finally, when he was standing a few inches in front of me, his hot breath hitting my face, he leaned forward until our noses were actually touching. In less than a second, before I had time to react, he had grabbed my arm and twisted me around so my head was leaning on his shoulder, forced down by his hand, and I was facing the flock, with both of my hands pinned behind me.
I watched as Fang jumped forward, trying to get a hit at this guy when I felt a searing pain in my neck. "Wait," the tiger boy told Fang, "or I snap her neck." The pressure on my throat slowly faded as Fang backed away.
"Take them," ordered the boy. When none of the others moved, he repeated, "Take them!"
The striped people hesitantly moved toward the flock, but before they could get there, another voice sounded. "Stop! Josh, let go of her." The boy, Josh, slowly loosened his grip. As soon as I could, I spun around, turning so my back no longer faced this boy. When I was out of his reach, I turned to look at the person who had called him off. It was a girl, another tiger person. She was glaring at Josh, but she slowly turned to look at me.
"It's you," she whispered. I stood frozen for a few seconds as she gawked at me.
"Yep, it's me," I said nonchalantly.
She smiled. "I'm sorry," the girl apologized, laughing. "It's just- you're actually Maximum Ride." I stared at her now, wondering what I was to her. Why did she care who Maximum Ride was? "Oh, sorry! You still don't know who I am," she said, mistaking my puzzled features over who she thought I was for something else. "My name is Talon. I live here, with the rest of my kind. Do you understand, Max? We escaped from the school, too."
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The next morning I woke up and found, to my surprise that I was about the last one in the whole camp to wake up. The events from the day before flooded back to my mind. Talon; Josh; the tiger pack- the School's latest successful experiment.
"Boo," a lazy voice said behind me. I jumped about a foot in the air and landed on the floor next to the couch I had slept on. I whipped around to face the intruder, trying to recover my dignity as I did so. "I scared you," the trespasser snorted. "I scared the almighty Maximum Ride." He took a step forward.
"What do you want Josh?" I asked angrily. "Haven't you ever heard of knocking?" How had he gotten in so quietly? Or, more importantly, how long had he been here?
"Yes, I have, for your information." He took a long, dramatic breath before he continued. "But, seeing that you're sleeping in my hut, I didn't fell the need to."
I looked at him in confusion. "This is your hut?" I waited until he'd nodded before continuing. "So, where did you sleep?"
"Outside. I can use a little fresh air every once in a while, so I told Talon that you guys could have it." I was surprised by this gesture of kindness from him. Before now, Josh had been rude to me and the rest of the flock. He had tried to order the others around before Talon had shown up. But he had sacrificed his home for us? It made no sense.
"I'm sorry you couldn't sleep here. I didn't know anyone stayed here," I apologized. "I guess I thought it was a guest house, or something."
Josh laughed. It was a warm, welcoming laugh that didn't fit the cold personality he had had the day before. "Yeah, Max, 'cause we get a lot of guests around here." I felt my cheeks flush, and as soon as he saw it, he laughed again. I smiled. That laugh just made you do it. It was a mix between a purr and a roar, and I couldn't help liking it.
"Did you need something, Josh?" I asked, kindly this time.
"Yeah, um," he started, "well, Talon was just wondering if you were coming. The meeting starts in about five minutes." Suddenly, I remembered. Talon had said we were going to have a meeting this morning.
It was supposed to be about the whitecoats, the School, and anything else we might need to know. "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I forgot," I yelped. I leaped to my feet and ran to the door. Then I remembered Josh. Turning around, blushing again, I asked, "Are you coming?"
He smiled a nice, shiny smile that showed off his sharp teeth. "For a second I though you were going to leave me," he taunted.
"I would never do that," I replied, quickly walking out the door and making my way toward the center of the camp, where the meeting was supposed to be held. I heard someone coming up behind me and turned around, expecting Josh to be standing in front of me.
"Hey, Max," Gazzy enthused. "Are you coming to the meeting? All of the tigers are going to be there. I saw some who look my age. But most of them are older, like you." A small smile tugged at my lips at the boy's eagerness, but I felt a flood of disappointment that it wasn't Josh I was talking to.
"Yeah, Gazzy," I told him, "I'm coming to the meeting. We should head over there now. 'Kay?" The young boy nodded his head fervently. "Let's go." We quickly started toward the camp's center. This would be interesting.
"We're tigrine-sapien hybrids. The whitecoats created us to serve the same purpose as Erasers. We're called Hunters," Talon explained. "We were what the School was originally trying to create. Crossing a tiger, one of the world's most dangerous and powerful creatures, with a human, capable of thinking and strategizing- we were made to kill. The whitecoats tried for years. They wanted us; it was the ultimate goal. Finally the School kind of gave up. They moved on, trying to create other crossbreeds. They succeeded; they created the Erasers, and you six. Only recently did the School decide to try tiger crossbreeds again. And, this time, they succeeded. The only thing is, when they retried, they were so concentrated on creating us, the whitecoats forgot to control us. That's probably why they succeeded- there's a better chance of failure when you're trying to control the experiments, because the test subject often dies.
"See, when Erasers are made," she continued, "the whitecoats have to put implants in their human brains. They don't replace the brain; they just extract any part of the true human. They let the memories stay, but they cut out all real emotions and anything else that might cause the Eraser to resist. Sure, Erasers can feel; they feel anger, sadness, joy, and everything else- but none of it is real. After all of that is taken- they replace those parts of the brain with other things; hunger, the desire for a hunt, for blood- which is the only true emotion any good Eraser has ever felt. Of course, the whitecoats do make mistakes, like they did with us, and you.
"When they try to make new, better batches of Erasers, they can make errors. Sometimes they don't get all of the emotions out, or don't put the implant in correctly; sometimes they don't do anything at all- they create the Eraser just to see if it works, then they kill off those Erasers and try to make a new batch with the implants." Talon paused. "Do you get it, Max?"
"Yeah, but, if they made all of you without the implants, could they make Hunters with the controls?" An overwhelming silence landed on the large group. "They can, can't they?"
"Yes, it might take a little while, but they will, eventually," said a voice from behind me. I whirled around to find Josh just inches away. I noticed Fang tense up beside me. He still hadn't recovered from Josh's first attack on us.
"Josh, how do you do that? I swear, you make no sound, whatsoever. Are you going to sneak up on me some more? Because, you've done it plenty of times already, so you really don't have to do it anymore." I felt the rest of the flock look at me questioningly. Ignoring them, I turned back to Talon. "If the whitecoats find all of you, what will happen?" I watched her sparkling green eyes glance over the group of Hunters, her striped face frowning.
"Let's just say we don't want that to happened," she told me.
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Okay, well, that's chapter 7. How was it? Once again, I really think that 'tigrine' sounds stupid, so if it's not right, pleeeaaassseee, tell me. Constructive criticism is ALWAYS welcome. Please review, too! And I'm sorry, but I only got 2 reviews last chap, so I'm gonna have to go back to waiting for 5! Sorry, but I need the ideas! I know some of the things I'm going to do in the story, but I don't really know the overall point of it. I need your ideas for what's going to happen! I'll try to update soon. Thanx- Dringer