I didn't want to bring up the topic of getting out of Antarctica for awhile, so I let Fang go with the rest of the flock. While Nudge, Angel and Gazzy built a snowman, I was thinking about how we were going to get out of here. I wondered what polar bear tasted like. Hey, if we could eat desert rat…
Oh, jeezum. Polar bears. One could just happen to lumber by here and we wouldn't stand a chance against those jaws and teeth.
We definitely needed out. How was I going to convince Fang? Maybe if he took us one by one, it would work. Then he wouldn't be using as much effort each time. I mean, Itex was bound to come looking for us eventually. How long would it take to convince him that we needed to get out of here?
He doesn't even know how to control his power, said a voice in my head that was, annoyingly, myself. He did it on accident. You'll never get back.
It's really discouraging when even your own thoughts don't think that you'll live.
I sighed and traced a random pattern in the snow with a gloved finger. I needed to do something. Sitting here and doing nothing was going to drive me absolutely crazy. Not crazy as in impatient crazy, we're talking insane asylum, seeing-things-that-aren't-there crazy.
I extended my arm out farther to draw and felt a twinge of pain. I winced. I had forgotten about that bullet wound. Okay, there was that too. Look at all this stuff adding up against me! If I was normal, I'd say it was a coincidence, but I knew better. Way better.
I bounced my knee up and down, up and down. I had to do something. I was going nuts. Itex could be right around the corner and here we were building snowmen!
I had to know what was around here. I stood and brushed snow off of my coat. "Hey, Fang!" I yelled in his direction. "C'mere! I want to talk to you."
He looked up with a questioning look on his face. I gestured for him to come closer. He did so, attempting to jog through the deep snow. It didn't go well – his feet kept getting stuck. I stifled a snicker and met him halfway. "I think that we should figure out if there's anyone here," I told him. "You know, gather up the flock and get a feel for the place."
He shook his head. "Don't think so."
I raised one eyebrow. "Really?" Well, that was pretty much too bad, because that's what we were going to do anyway.
"We might not make it back to this spot. I don't know if that's a good idea."
I waved my hand at the landscape – ice, snow, and more ice. "I don't see anything to come back to."
"We could get lost. Go in circles. Freeze."
"We're not freezing, exercise warms you up, we're already lost, and who cares if we go in circles?" I replied. "Come on, let's go already. The longer we stay here, the better chance there is of Itex following us and bringing us back to the School."
"And the farther away we go, the better chance there is of us running into Itex. It's not a good idea," Fang said. I rolled my eyes.
"So, either way, we're running into Itex. I, for one, am not going to sit here and wait for them to find us. Kay?" I set off toward the flock. "Hey, guys! Come 'ere!" I yelled in their direction.
Nudge was the first one to reach me. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair was dripping with melted snow. "What are we doing?" she asked breathlessly. "Are we going back to America or what?"
"Not yet," I said with a meaningful glance at Fang. He stared impassively back, his arms crossed. "We're just going to take a little look around."
"Where are we going?" asked Angel, slipping her hand in mine and holding Total closer to her.
"Nowhere really," I said. "But we can't just stay here. We're going to keep moving, just like normal."
"Are you sure there were no clothes for me?" Total asked me.
"Yeah, I'm sure. Sorry, Total. C'mon, let's go." I wasn't planning on coming back to this spot, so I had the kids gather whatever stuff they had managed to keep and off we were.
On the road again…or should I say on the ice?
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Do we have any food?" asked Gazzy.
"Um…that would be a no," I replied guiltily. "Itex took our bags." All the more reason to go back to America.
"So we lost everything?" Iggy asked glumly, but it was more of a statement than a question.
"The laptop too," said Fang. "That sucks."
"Oh! Um, actually Fang," Nudge began guiltily. She stopped and rummaged in the inside of her coat. Then she produced a long, thin black object. I frowned. Was that what I thought it was?
"What are you doing with my laptop?" Fang asked. That pretty much confirmed what I was thinking. How on earth did she get that without anyone noticing her? I knew she was good with technology, but not stealing technology. Did anyone else know that?
"I rescued it. They took it from you and it was on the counter, so I took it back in all the confusion," Nudge admitted. "It was after I took off those electric collars. It just looked like the laptops they use to record all the stuff they learn from us, but I could tell it was ours 'cause it has the scratch marks from Total's claws and the heart I doodled on it when I was bored one day."
"Nudge," I said slowly, "why didn't you tell us that you had this?"
"I forgot?" she said, shrugging guiltily and attempting a halfway innocent expression. It failed pretty miserably. "I'm sorry? I didn't mean to? Anything?"
Fang held out his hand for the laptop and Nudge gave it to him carefully. "Sorry, Fang," she apologized again, "but you have it now, right? So it's not a total loss or anything. Imagine what would happen if we lost it."
Fang examined it. "If we'd lost this thing, I don't know what I'd do."
"It'd be back to Internet cafes and libraries," I said. "Which is so inconvenient." No, seriously, it would be. Can you imagine having to go from place to place just so that Fang could get on the computer every week? Yeah, I can see it now – 'Wait, Max, before we run away to somewhere safe, let's stop at a café to update the blog!' No, thank you.
"Hey, Fang, can I try something?" Nudge asked. "I need to see the laptop to do it, though."
"What do you want to do?" Fang asked.
"Trust me," she said. "Please?" She turned the Bambi eyes on him, and I knew he would give it up.
He handed it over to her, grumbling. Nudge sat abruptly down in the snow and flipped open the laptop. "Come on, come on," she coaxed as she turned it on. "Work! Please work…yes! Life!" The laptop booted up, and Nudge signed on and was on the Internet immediately. "Have you ever heard of Google Earth?" she asked me.
"Um, no," I replied slowly. I got a mental image of people searching for images of soil on Google. "What the heck is that?"
"Well, Google put a satellite out in space, it might have been a couple actually, now that I think about it, and now you can zoom in on stuff and see your house and everything. It's really cool. So…here, look." She turned the laptop towards me. There was a picture of the earth on the screen, floating in space. It rotated to show North America. She typed a command in and it spun so we could see Antarctica. "If I could get closer," she muttered. "I'd almost be able to see us."
Nudge frowned. "I think that you need an address or coordinates or something," she said, "and I don't know the coordinates of where we are…unless…" she peered at the screen and bit her lip. Then, she typed a series of numbers into the command bar and it zoomed in on a specific point on the huge continent.
"And there we are," said Nudge with a flourish. "You can't see us, but we're…." she did a double take of the screen. "Someone else is here, too." She pointed to a spot on the screen that pretty clearly showed a building.
"Maybe it's just nice scientists doing research," said Gazzy hopefully.
"And maybe I'm human," I muttered so he couldn't hear. Gr-eat. Aw, crap, Fang was right. We walked smack bang onto Itex's front porch."We're moving from here, right now. Nudge, pack up the laptop. Total, go with Iggy. U and A, everyone!"
You're not going anywhere, Max. You're going to stay right there.
I jumped visibly. It was the second voice again. He or she had been gone for a looong time. Just stay there and everything will be fine. You'll be okay.
Yeah, right. I knew better than to trust mysterious voices popping up in my head telling me to stay in one spot, especially in a sitch like this. Heck, I only halfway trust Jeb and he's my freaking father. I'm not staying anywhere, I said mentally. Nice try. Next time, try to stay gone, will ya?
"Come on, guys, get up, get up!" I willed. "Let's get away from here."
We're not going to kill you, Max. We're going to enhance you, make you better. We've decided that maybe there's some hope for you after all. You and your flock could be valuable, extremely valuable.
Ha! So you are with Itex! I crowed triumphantly. Oh, way to slip up. That was a stupid move. I took off into the air with the rest of my flock and sped off behind them in a random direction.
We hadn't gotten more than a mile away when I heard a ssss-thunk! I turned to see Angel plummeting to the snow, her eyes closed. "Angel!" I screamed, diving to catch her. Fang was closer and had already gone into a steep dive, but as soon as he caught Angel around twenty feet from the ground, another dart hit him and he began to fall as well. My breath caught in my throat. Oh no, no, no, no, no, this couldn't be happening…
I craned my neck in midair to try to see who was attacking us. Flyboys were gaining behind us, holding dart guns in their hands. One spotted me eying them and aimed his gun. I zigzagged through the air, trying to make myself harder to aim at. It was kinda hard considering the wingspan and the fact that I was panicking. I knocked Gazzy out of the way of another dart and shouted, "Fly lower! Get to Fang and Angel!"
Nudge zipped downward, followed by Iggy, Gazzy and then me. I heard another hissing sound and felt a sharp pain in my right forearm. I had time to think woozily, Perfect, now I match. Now both of my arms are hurt, before things started to go fuzzy around the edges.
The last thing I remembered was a distant, muffled thump as I hit the snow, and then everything, annoyingly, was black.
A/N: Sorry for the suckiness and slowness of this chapter. And the cliffie. But the next chapter is going to be much better because…it's already part written and I know what'll happen! (Okay, it's only like a page and quarter, but it's a start…) I had to get from Point A to Point B in this chapter and explain some things, so sorry. But there was a clue in this chappie that's MAJORLY important…