A/N: thanks for al those who reviewed or even read the story. I still don't own Maximum Ride, Patterson does. bows to Patterson lucky guy. The plot isn't mine- but I didn't steal it this girl (kaite3llen) gave me a challenge for a story. The words are mine and the song is from the foo fighters. Enjoy.

-twilightjunkie1313

Jeb Pov:

I had been driving for a good four hours before I decided to pull off the road. I needed food, the SUV needed gas and the flock needed to stretch their legs.

So I pulled off the road into this nice rest stop and truck stop type place with a small park. It was about eleven at night and there was nobody else around, we were in the middle of nowhere.

I walked to the back of the SUV and opened the back, letting the doors swing open to reveal six angry, sleepy, pale children. The flock.

I opened Max's crate first. She jumped out, landing on the tar on her haunches. She stood, lightly and brushed me aside. In a second she had opened Fang's crate. He jumped out of his crate in a similar fashion, landing on the tar in a crouch. He stood and walked up to max silently, helping her get Gazzy and Angel from their crate.

In less than a minute the whole flock stood on in the parking lot. Max and Fang stood silently, staring at me and the truck stop behind me.

"Are you hungry?" I asked, nobody answered.

"Let's eat." I said, ignoring the silence and walking toward the brightly lit restaurant.

Fang Pov:

This guy was going to get fired. White coats were never nice to us, they weren't supposed to be. This guy...jeb. He had taken us away from the school. He told the security guard that we were going to the beta site, wherever that was. I could tell by his tone that he was lying, that we would never get close to the beta site.

So where were we going? What are we doing here? I looked over to Max, catching her eye. I gave her a what-is-going-on-here stare.

"Stay with it, for now." she breathed, barely making any sound at all.

I nodded and followed the white coat.

Max Pov:

When we reached the door of the building Jeb, the white coat, took Angel out of my arms.

"This is a restaurant, a truck stop." He said slowly.

"What are we doing here?" Nudge asked.

"I will get into that later, right now we should eat. None of these people have wings, and they don't know you. So don't attract attention to yourselves." He said easily.

"What does that mea...?" Nudge began, but Iggy cut her off.

"Stay quiet and don't let them see your wings."

"Oh."

With that we went inside.

It was bright and loud and half full of sleepy people. Some were eating and some were running around with trays of food. I felt the flock tense up, except for angel. Jeb walked through the restaurant quietly, sitting down at a table near the back. One by one we filled in after him. I saw Fang look at the window out of the corner of my eye. He was thinking the same thing I was...

If anything happened we were going through that window, and running away.

Jeb Pov:

For six kids who had never been outside of a barb-wire complex before they were doing pretty good. I handed each of them a menu.

"What's this?" Nudge asked quietly to Max.

"Dunno, ask him." Max replied nodding my way.

"To get food, this is all the stuff that the cooks can make. You order off of it." I explained carefully.

"Oh, Max can I have a cheeseburger? I have never had one before and a guy at the lab..." Nudge quieted when Max shot her a look. Then she turned to me.

"We'll have three cheeseburgers..." Max began.

"Extra lettuce, pickles and tomatoes on mine." Fang muttered quietly.

"Make that four burgers." Iggy added.

"Me too." Gazzy added in an excited whisper.

A few minutes later the waitress came, and eyes us over before smiling hugely.

"Hi, what'll it be for you?" She asked cheerfully. They all stayed quiet, hardly moving or breathing. Max grinned quickly.

"He has our orders." She explained before going silent again.

"Five adult cheeseburgers, extra lettuce, tomatoes and pickles for each. A salad for me and some chicken soup for her..." I motioned to Angel sitting next to me; her head barely cleared the tabletop.

"Okay..." The waitress nodded and finished jotting the order down. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, about thirteen glasses of water." The waitress nodded and walked away.

It was calm and quiet for about two seconds after that.

"Why did you take us from the school?" Max asked, staring at me. The whole flock was staring at me. Except for angel, she was bouncing on her chair trying to see over the tabletop.

"You didn't deserve that. Your just kids."

"Where are you taking us?" She pressed, her eyes boring a hole into me.

"I can't tell you..." I began, but Iggy rolled his eyes.

"You will, right now. Otherwise I will break that window and we will be out of here. You will have no chance at catching us." Max's tone was low and threatening.

"I can't tell you where exactly." I said, trying to reason with her.

"What state." Fang asked simply. No emotion showed in his voice or eyes. It was impossible to tell if he was scared, happy, nervous or sick.

I sat quiet for a moment.

Max Pov:

My patience was gone; jeb didn't want to tell us anything. I didn't want to sit here in a loud, bright, people-filled building, but I did want food. I took a quick glance at Fang.

He was nervous. His face was calm and his eyes were dark and blank. His hands, resting on his lap under the table were clenched, the tendons on the backs of them looked like ropes. His knuckles were white.

I took a deep breath in, and let it out slowly.

"Tell us by the time we finish our food or your paying for the burgers and the window." I said slowly, trying to keep my impatience and anger from my voice. I must have failed miserably, because I saw Jeb wince and Fang relax.

Two minutes of silence later and our food arrived. Carried to our table by two waiters, who sat it down and cast questioning looks over their shoulders as they walked away.

"Five minutes guys." I said addressing the flock, then I peered over at angel. "speedy." I said smiling at her. Instantly they dug into their burgers like starving erasers. It was kinda nasty, but the burgers were great. Jeb's eyes went wide as he saw us snarf down our food.

Jeb Pov:

"you don't have a lot of time Jeb." Max said around a mouthful of burger. I glanced at Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy and finally Fang. Fang looked back at me with a blank expression, somehow he managed to chew a huge bite of burger without moving a muscle of his face. I shivered and moved my glance back to Max. She was staring at me, waiting for me to speak.

"Colorado." I said slowly. Iggy was slurping a glass of water with a straw, draining it in less than ten seconds. He stopped slurping and an eyebrow rose.

"Excuse me?" He began, leaning closer to Max, Fang and myself. "That's a big place. North, south could you be any more specific?"

"Umm, it's by a canyon?" I offered.

"So it has to be somewhere near grand canyon national park, or on the Colorado river itself. I can live with that." Iggy said cheerfully, waving his empty water glass, the straw swirling around in it.

Fang Pov:

I could almost hear Max thinking. Iggy wasn't stupid, he hadn't said that information for jeb's sake. He had been talking to us, telling us that the place in colorado could be real.

Of course that meant nothing at all. We didn't know if jeb was lying to us and using a real place to back the story. That's where I came in. I was our in-case-max's-plan-fails guy. So far I had the following scanario layed out. Max catchs Jeb in a lie. I jump onto the table, grab my chair and break the glass. Then I grab Angel, and Iggy's arm. We jump out of the window, Max follows with Nudge and Gazzy. We all run for it.

"Okay, we will come with you." Max says suddenly. I almost choke on my burger, but manage to keep from coughing. Beside Max I can see Iggy and Nudge, each tense and listening.

"No crates, we ride in seats like normal kids." Max continued, I snuck a glance at her out of the corner of my eye. She was sitting up straight, wearing that half smirk of superiority. She was stubborn and had the upper hand on this Jeb guy.

"Okay, anything else?" He asked, knowing he was beat.

"Yeah, Fang?" She asked looking over at me.

"Give me Angel." I said clamly, I hated the idea of Angel sitting next to a whitecoat. Jeb looked at me confused. There was a pause.

"Your serious?" He said slowly. On the other side of Max Iggy crossed his arms.

"He wouldn't have said it if he wasn't." Max stated slowly, her tone cold. It was the voice she reserved for ersaers and whitecoats. Full of anger and seriousness.

Jeb handed Angel over the table without another word. Angel looked up with those huge blue eyes and nuzzled into me.

"Anything else?" He asked slowly, Iggy smiled.

"We leave now." Max said in a harsh whisper. I could tell from her voice that this place was creeping her out. It was creeping all of us out, we were mutant bird kids who hadn't ever been outside the school in our young lives. Normal people were strange to us. Sterile, stainless steel examination tables, tiled labs, erasers that were half wolf-half human were normal. This place however was mindblowing.

Three minutes after that we were gone.

Max Pov:

It was weird to leave the truck stop. It felt good to be out of there, away from all the loud normal people, and the small portions of food.

But it was weird. It reminded me that we were not going back to the school, we were going to colorado. We had busted out of camp gloom-and-doom and were not going to be part of the real world. I had spent a lifetime in a cage, fighting erasers, kicking whitecoat butt and making smarty-mouth comments to the unfortunate guys who come to take my pulse or get a blood sample.

The real world was going to be a mindblowing, alkwardly unusual, change of pace.

Hook me up a new evolution,
'Cause this one is a lie.

A/N: questions? Comments (hopefully)? Concerns? You people can figure it out. Push that button and reveiw. Next chapter up as soon as I can finish typing it. Until then...

Peace, love and little voices in you head (you can pick between two, Edwards voice that shows up in Bella's head-from new moon. Or the annoyingly accurate and metaphorical voice from Max's head