7
The New York subway tunnels had been my flock's save haven for a day or two back before we had headed out to Washington. The air was thick and the people thicker, but it still beat sitting in a cage at the School day and night waiting to die.
Well, that little haven had just gone up in flames. Literally.
"What happened?" Angel and Nudge had wrapped their small arms around my waist for comfort, shocked by the sight in front of them. We all were. "What happened here?" Nudge repeated.
A subway train seemed to have gone off the track and collided with the cement wall on the left side. The side that many homeless people had once called home. The side that was now a pile of burning rubble with rebars, cinderblock, and chunks of metal scattered everywhere. Oh, along with something else that made us almost lose our breakfasts. Bodies, hundreds of bodies. Bodies that my flock and I had once actually talked to. Bodies that would never breathe again.
I looked around to make sure my flock was all right. Nudge and Angel were still holding me tight and crying into my shirt, and Gazzy was over by Iggy explaining what it looked like. I saw Iggy's face slowly growing more horrified at what Gazzy was painting in his mind.
"Max, over here!" Fang called to me. I whipped around to see him crouching over something among the piles of wreckage. "You might wanna see this."
Nudge and Angel understood and let go of me, still crying, and wandered over to be with Gazzy and Iggy.
When I reached the point where Fang was, I noticed what he was examining in horrifying realization. It was the body of the kid with the computer I had met here so long ago. The kid who's computer possibly held the answers I needed to "save the world."
"And look at this," Fang said, pointing to something in the boy's head. "It wasn't the train that killed him." Lodged in the boy's head was a small bullet no bigger than a thimble.
Needless to say, we had seen enough blood and gore in our lives to be able to get along with this kind of thing. But this one took the cake. I lost it right then and there, spilling my breakfast all over the ruined train track below us. Fang crouched behind me and put his hand on my shoulder, sending a warm feeling through my whole body, and instantly I felt better. Was this another power? Or something else...
I looked up at Fang and noticed he was looking at me with a different sort of emotion in his eyes. The two of us just sat there staring at each other for a moment, then came back to reality and looked away. I think my cheeks flushed.
"Max?" Nudge was leading the rest of the flock over to where Fang and I were. "Is that boy here?"
My stomach started to churn again as I thought of the bullet in the boy's head. Nudge can help, my Voice said.
Without caring how dumb I sounded, I said out loud, "How?"
You all have powers.
It only took a second after that and I realized what the Voice meant. Slowly I took Nudge's small hand and lead her over to the boy's body. "Nudge...I need you to do something. It may really suck, but it might help us a lot." I couldn't believe I was doing this as I quietly asked her to place her hand on the boy's forehead. "Would you be able to see what happened if you did that, even if it was just for a second?"
Nudge nodded and reached out, here fingers mere inches from the boy's bullet wound. Suddenly I felt like Maximum Evil and grabbed her arm again. She turned her head and stared at me, her eyes showing no emotion. I whispered, "Are you sure about this? We can find out another way if you don't want to."
"I'm sure," Nudge whispered back to me. With that I released my grasp on her arm and she brushed her fingers gently over the boy's bullet wound. And screamed.
Fang and I were immediately on her, pulling as hard as we could at her arm, doing anything to get her away from the body. But she seemed glued to it, and not by choice. She screamed and panted, sweat pouring down her forehead, and suddenly came loose, flying back into Fang's strong arms. I rushed to Fang's side and took her from him, cradling her small head in my arms.
Nudge was still panting and gasping for breath, and I was crying, placing my hand on her forehead. Her temperature must have been at least a hundred. Another wave of guilt surged through me, and I placed my head softly on hers. "I'm so sorry Nudge. I'm so sorry." My voice was breaking and I didn't even care. The flock had seen me cry before, but they had never seen me order a small child to do something this terrible before. Note to self: Smash face against a mirror and curse loudly later.
Suddenly I noticed Nudge's left hand had curled into a fist in my lap. Well, if she hit me, it would not only use up the rest of her strength, but it would be step one in my payback for this. But she didn't hit me. Instead, she lifted her fist in front of my face and slowly opened her eyes to look around at the flock, which at this point had circled around me. We all realized what she wanted and stacked our left fists on top of hers, then knocked each other's lightly with our right fists. I took Nudge's small right hand and knocked it against the other's fists for her.
"Nudge," I began again, but she stopped me.
"It's okay Max." Nudge's voice was giving out, and I could tell she was just about to fall unconscious. But before she did, she said one more thing. "Jeb shot the kid."