"You both remember our back-up plan?" I checked, speaking at almost a yell so my voice would be audible to Jay and Nya over the rush of air going past us. We were in the sky, wings flapping and flexing powerfully, sending us toward the School.

"I do, but I'm confused," Jay confessed, flying a little closer to me.

I frowned. I had gone over it twice while we were still at home and twice more while we were flying. Had Jay not been paying attention? "Well, I can go over it again. If we get split up, then we meet up at the south side of the Caves of Despair. The School is close enough to there that it should be easy to get to, but not so close we'd have to be worried about being spotted."

Jay shook his head. "That's not what I'm confused about. I'm confused why we need a Plan B. How would we get split up? We're flying all together, and we're going to keep flying together, right? How would we lose each other? I mean, unless maybe a whole bunch of regular birds flew by and one of us got caught up in their flock and got lost that way or something."

"I don't think that would happen," Nya said with a small smile.

"I don't think we're going to get split up, but it's good to be prepared," I said patiently. "We have to be sure we have a way to get back together in case something happens."

"Something like what?" Jay asked.

I didn't know, but I wasn't going to tell him that. "Like something unexpected."

Jay thought about that for a minute, then he nodded. "Okay, I see."

We flew in silence for a few moments, all enjoying the sun on our faces and the fresh air blowing past our wings. Well, I knew I was enjoying it, at least as much as was possible. It was hard, though. I was trying not to think about how angry Cole and Kai had been when we left, trying not to think about how much danger Zane could be in at that very moment, trying not to think about the fact that we would have to stop to rest and eat probably multiple times before we could get to him, trying not to think how hard this could be.

"This is nice," Jay sighed. So he was enjoying it too, I gathered. "Flying is super cool. Feeling the wind in my hair, seeing everything around us for miles and miles, everything like that. Some things about being a birdkid are awesome."

"And some things are less awesome, like living in fear of evil scientists and awful snake-people, and also being total freaks who won't ever get to live normally," Nya pointed out.

"Well, you win some, you lose some," Jay said cheerily. "The power of positive thinking, people! And who said we'll never get to live normally?"

"I say it," I volunteered. "We've got wings, we've got hollow bones, we've got weird lungs and weird hearts and weird pretty much everything. We don't have parents, we don't have teachers, we don't have neighbors, we don't have normal lives, and I'm pretty sure we never will."

Jay coughed. "Uh, I might have something that would help with one of those things."

Looking over at him in confusion, I asked, "What do you mean?"

"I looked through all the papers when you and Nya were still packing. All of Garmadon's papers, I mean. I was just curious, you know? And some of them had our names on them, and one of those had my name on it, and some other names too, with the name of this town. I looked the town up and it's in the Sea of Sand, kind of near the School, so we're sort of heading toward it. It's a really little town, easy to find someone in," Jay said all in a rush. "And I was thinking about how we don't know anything about our parents, about where we came from, and I always wondered how we came to be at the School and whether our parents even knew what happened to us, and I was wondering if-"

"Jay," I cut him off quickly before he could ask what I thought he was going to ask.

"What?" Jay asked fake-innocently.

I sighed. "I get it. You want to know about your past, your parents, everything like that. I feel the same way. But those names? They probably had nothing to do with you. We probably didn't even have real parents; after all, the whitecoats always talked like we'd been made in their lab. So it's not worth thinking about, okay? We need to concentrate on getting Zane back."

Silence met that statement, nothing but the sound of the wind and the sounds of our wings beating in sync. Nya glanced between Jay and I worriedly, making a concerned face.

"Jay?" I asked.

"Yeah, right, yeah, of course," Jay said quickly. "I get it. I'll concentrate. I totally get it."

I didn't think he got it. In fact, I thought this whole conversation was going to come back to haunt me. But at least he was going to concentrate, and that was a positive. Like Jay himself had said just a little while before, you win some, you lose some.