Sorry for the very long wait for this chapter, it's been sitting half finished on my computer for a while now; I've grown a bit lax with the writing. I also have a bit of a confession to make: I'm not sure if I'll make it to thirteen, I have a few more ideas, but I've started to go off Maximum Ride a bit - I don't think it ever recovered since the fourth book. Was the latest one any good? I'll do as much as I can, but characterisation may not be spot on because I'm not as familiar with the books as I was when I started. Sorry.

Ugh. You know those first few minutes just after you wake up when your eyes are still adjusting to the light? Yeah, that sucks. Shafts of sunlight penetrate the flimsy curtains, making me even more disorientated. Wait a minute. Sunlight? Since when did they install windows in dog crates? And when did they get so roomy? I wonder, as I realise my movement is not confined by metal slats. I frown slightly as I become aware of the fact I am not in a dog crate, but in a room. With beds! And I am wearing real clothes for a change, not just those stupid white medical gowns the Whitecoats normally make us wear. I am not alone. One of the other subjects in the avian hybrid experiment is with me, too, a coffee skinned girl about seven years old. She's not yet woken up, but she moves about wildly in her sleep, lashing out at the pillow, the duvet, anything she can reach. It's a wonder she hasn't managed to knock anything onto the floor yet. She's the only one of us who actually knows their real name - the Whitecoats generally don't bother treating us like proper people. Instead, they label us with a dumb number, putting us through their pointless tests until we're exhausted and can barely move. She only found out because she snuck a glance at one of their files.

The irresistible smell of bacon wafts into the room, making my mouth water. Whoa. Something's definitely wrong with this picture. Since when did the School start being nice? And then I remember.

"Where are we?" the girl says, suddenly waking up with a jolt. It surprises me how alert she is, like she's been awake for hours, not just a few seconds. But that's the way it is with us: we sleep, but never truly go to sleep; there's always a part of us which remains conscious, a part which refuses to allow us to let down our guard. It's the same part of us which has kept us alive on several occasions.

"I don't know," I reply truthfully. The girl wrinkles her nose as she too catches the smell of bacon which lingers in the air. But she ignores it. I've taught her well.

"A trap?" she questions.

"No," I say firmly. "Jeb wouldn't do that to us." Jeb. The only Whitecoat who's ever shown us a shred of kindness. He smuggled us out of the School yesterday. I don't know how, exactly. But we're free now - or are we? - and that's all that matters.

Suddenly, the door starts to open, and I tense myself, wings outstretched and fists up, ready to fight. My companion does the same. "Good morning, girls." Jeb. I relax - but only slightly. Behind him, small, blonde girl follows, two, verging on three years old. She says nothing, just stares at me with wide eyes. This girl is the youngest of the flock, my sweet, innocent angel.

The other girl is unusually quiet. I, on the other hand, have plans of my own. "Where's the rest of the flock? What are we doing here?" I ask, cutting to the chase. "Where is here?" No point hanging around. I need to find out as much as I can, so I can evaluate the situation and work out what's best for us. Jeb's clever, and I'm sure he'd never intentionally do anything to hurt us, but for all he knows, there are hundreds of Whitecoats outside, assembled and ready to storm the place. Even though this room is infinitely better than the dog crates I'm used to - the absence of chains and needles injecting me with God knows what being a major plus - for some reason, I can't allow myself to get truly comfortable. Pretty dumb, huh? Suspicious me asking to go back, asking to be tortured all over again. But at least when we were in the School, we knew what was happening to us. Uncertainty is something that makes me feel worse, queasy even.

"All in good time," Jeb replies, his voice even, calm. Patient. I frown. Jeb's not usually one for vagueness and sugar coating. From the day we met him, he's always been straight with us. When I was a lot younger, the Whitecoats used to play tricks with us, telling us those little white pill were sweets, presents for us because we'd been so good. Lies. All lies. But Jeb would never hide the truth from us. He'd try to avoid it, yes, avoid looking at us when he revealed the awful enormity of our doomed situation, but he'd always tell us in the end.

I look at the blonde girl and wait. She nods, an almost imperceptible movement, and I know that we can trust Jeb - for now, anyway. The girl has an uncanny knack for telling when people are telling the truth, how someone is feeling, whether the Whitecoats were going to treat us bad that day, or really bad. I joked sometimes that she could read minds, but she'd furrow her brow and shake her head defiantly. I later understood that her "gift" was vaguer than that, more of a feeling than actual visions, and that it came and went. This took a lot time to learn - how was she supposed to explain something like that when all we'd learnt of language came from the eavesdropped conversations of the Whitecoats and the few time we'd spent with Jeb that were long enough for us to actually get anywhere? But all things considered, my little angel had coped well. She's young, but strong, and seems more able to pick things up than the rest of us.

In truth, I didn't know whether her "powers" were the result of the experiments inflicted upon us - it didn't make sense she was the only one showing such signs - of whether it was really right for those excruciating hours of pain and unending agony could really be called experiments. Jeb said people conducted experiments to find out things. I said the Whitecoats obviously weren't very good at experiments because they had to keep carrying out new ones. Then Jeb had to go away because another Whitecoat was coming, and I didn't see him for weeks after that.

We go downstairs in silence, and enter a small room with a table and some weird looking machinery, metal cuboid blocks. The rest of the flock - three boys, two about the same age as me, and one slightly younger, the real brother of the blond girl - are sitting around the table, and the fist squeezed round my heart lessens its grip a little. Several plates of food lay in front of them uneaten, and they all keep sneaking glances at each other, not really sure what to say. When I enter the room, everyone looks at me, the unofficial leader of the flock, being the oldest by a few months, waiting for some sort of signal. I give a small nod and the flock and I begin to devour the food on the table like wild beasts. Manners have no place here - all we care about is eating, and boy, does this stuff taste good.

"The first thing we need to sort out is names," Jeb says. "Now Monique," he continues, looking at the coffee skinned girl who I'd shared a room with the previous night, "I know you already know yours, but if you want, you can still pick another."

"But there are so many names!" she squeals. "I could be Tiffany, Courtney, Lisa, Joey…"

One of the older boys - black hair, and with weird eyes that are so dark you can barely see where his pupils end and his irises start, except that there's an outer rings where, if you look close enough, you can just make out some gold flecks - stares at him, and then whispers one word, barely audible so that I have to strain my ears to hear it.

"Fang." He didn't say much, and when I'd first seen him, I wondered if the Whitecoats had done something to his voice box that meant he couldn't talk anymore. But I soon learnt that that was just the way he is, and grown to accept it, even if it did spook me out a little. Everything about him is silent and soundless, even the way he moves. He's a shadow, hidden in the darkness. Or maybe even a black panther sneaking up on its prey. I hadn't decided yet.

"Or Crystal or Joss or Katy or Michaela or Steph… Oh, how do I choose?"

It's the youngest boy's turn next. "Isn't it obvious?" he says, grinning madly. His ability to smile despite everything that had happened was one which I'd always been in awe of, admired even, and one that I'd never fully understood - was it just that he was too young to understand what was happening to him? Unfortunately, he also had other… er, abilities, ones that were much less welcomed, especially not by the Whitecoat on night duty.

"Isn't what obvious?" I ask, sighing. It's possible to admire something yet at times find it grating - you know how they say you always love your family, even if you may not always like them? (Not that I'd ever truly know - the flock are the only family I'd ever known, and perhaps that's a good thing.) The role of "leader" was one I didn't always like, because I didn't always have the answers, and that troubled me, because what sort of leader was I if I didn't know how to keep the flock safe? It was something I'd just grown to accept, like the fact I'd never make it out of the School.

"My name," he replies, rolling his eyes in exasperation and looking at me as if I'm stupid.

"Go on!" I urge impatiently, verging on the edge of frustration. Suddenly, he turns red and screws up his face in concentration. This is never a good sign. And sure enough, he lets rip, and we all groan, all except one.

"The Gasman!" he cackles, and then him and the blind one erupt into laughter, doing that dumb high five thing that guys do. (Or was it just them? What did I know about "normal" guys?)

"Cool," he - the blind one - says appreciatively. I admit, it seems wrong to refer to someone as "the blind one" but when we've got no other ways of distinguishing ourselves, what can you do? It has a certain ring to it, and at least it was easier to remember than "Subject 152849463749". I should explain - he wasn't born blind. But those evil scientists were doing some night vision experiment, and unfortunately, they weren't successful. It was the last straw for Jeb, who didn't want the rest of us going the same way, and I'm glad for it. It's bad enough being the messed up result of a modern day Frankenstein - I don't know what I'd do if I lost my sight as well.

"Or Harriet or Elizabeth or Mischa…" The girl witters on. I often wondered if the Whitecoats had done something to her voice box, too - she seems to talk an excessive amount. But then I realised people can be messed up without having ever been experimented on, and that sometimes there's a fine line between being messed up and being human. I'd caught her looking at one of the magazines one of younger Whitecoats had left out once, a glossy thing, with headlines that seemed to scream at you and pictures of pretty but constipated looking girls wearing silly clothes. To me, they were the ones that looked like freaks, but apparently, in the real world, they were classed as normal.

"An -An," a quiet voice pipes up by my side - the other girl. I crouch down, trying to understand what she wants.

"What is it|? Angela?" I try, but the other girl shakes her head. Us bird kids develop fast, and despite the fact she's still a baby, her beautiful porcelain face is already framed with a veil of blonde curls. "Alice? Angelica? Anne? Angelina?" I rattle off a list of names, but none of them seem to fit. Then she stares at me with those heart-breakingly blue eyes, and finally, I get it. "Angel," I say, my mouth curling up into a smile.

The boys - well, two of them - look deep in conversation, and occasionally the young one looks around the room, pointing at stuff, forgetting the "blind one" can't always see what he's gesturing to. But he's talking at the same time, and I realise he's describing the room. I look around our surroundings myself. It's obvious now that Jeb exaggerated when he talked about it before. From listening to his descriptions, I'd imagined a palace, but the reality is far less grand. The house looks a little shabby, like it could do with a bit of a clean. The paint on the walls is peeling, and there are yellow stains in the corners of the room. There's no real order to anything; books lie everywhere: face down on the coffee table, kept open with a half filled mug, or lying in stacks on the worn carpet, which is strewn with random garments, stray socks and even the odd takeaway carton, its spilled contents forming a congealed mass on the floor. Nice.

But I like the fact it looks lived in, you know? Like a home. Not like the blindingly white, sterile environment of the School.

"Or Louise or Amy or Jennifer…"

The boys stop talking briefly, so that the older blond one can reveal his chosen name: Iggy. I try not laugh - hey, it's his choice. At least he's actually chosen one. I turn my attention back to the room, hoping for some inspiration. The flaky walls are lined with framed pictures and articles. I don' recognise any of the faces, and there are too many words for me to be able to concentrate long enough to read and understand the texts on the walls, but I know from what Jeb told me that they're mostly scientists, and as I look at them, I notice that they're mainly men, apart from one of a woman with short, brown hair. She doesn't have the sort of face that would stand out in a crowd; in truth, she looks a little plain. But there's something in her eyes that refuses to let you ignore her, a steely determination and inner confidence.

"Jeb, who's that woman in the picture?" I ask, intrigued. He glances in the direction I'm pointing in before answering, "That's Sally Ride. She was the first American woman to go into space."

I think about that for a moment. Ride. There's something kind of cool about that name, it's an adventurer's name, the name of someone who needs business. But the name Sally doesn't really fit. I want my own name, one as original as the rest of the flock's. I'm by no means normal, so why should I have a normal name? No offence to Ms Ride, of course - but Sally's her name, not mine. I need something of my own, too. Something that describes me as a person, and isn't just a rip off of some astronaut, however cool she is. Something like…

"Maximum," I blurt out. "Maximum Ride." Everyone turns to look at me, the newly named Fang looking, for once, on the verge of a smile. Angel tugs on my shirt.

"Max-ee-um," she tries, struggling to get her tongue around the word.

"Max for short," Jeb suggests. I nod, agreeing, wondering if I've made the right choice. There's something kind of pretentious about the name "Maximum". "Max" on its own doesn't sound quite so bad.

"You can't have a boy's name!" The coffee skinned girl squeals, appalled. She digs her elbow into my ribs as she says this. Her incredibly sharp and pointy elbows, I might add.

"Hey!" I cry out irritably. "Quit nudg-"

"Ohmygod," she exclaims, barely pausing to breathe, but finding the time to prod me again. "That's it! It's perfect!"

"What is?" I ask, rubbing my sore ribs.

"Nudge - my new name!" she declares, rubbing her hands together with glee.

"Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, the Gasman and Angel," Jeb says, deep in thought.

Gazing round the room, my eyes fall on another picture, this one standing next to a dusty phone. In it, a baby is nestled comfortably in the arms of a man - presumably his father - his eyes looking up adorably. I gasp as I recognise the man in the picture. It can't be.

It's Jeb.

"Who's that?" I ask, pointing to the picture, question flitting around in my head like a swarm of angry bees. Who is the baby in the picture? Why is he with Jeb?

"It doesn't matter," he says quickly. Too quickly - does he hide more than he lets on? He picks it up and stares at it for a while, like he can't quite recognise the faces in it, all the while avoiding my gaze.

"Max…" he says, breaking. "I want you to live me."

"Live with you?" I repeat, slightly dumbstruck.

"Yes, live with me," he confirms.

I don't know what to say. I look over to the flock, who mostly look back at me with pleading eyes. I know what they're thinking: say yes, this is the closest we'll ever get to normalcy and freedom. But there's also a nagging fear deep inside me - we hardly know anything about Jeb. And then I think of our lives so far, and how much they've sucked up until now. I think of the Whitecoats and the School and the flock, and then I make my decision.

"Okay," I say, my voice wavering slightly. Nudge and Angel and the Gasman hug each other, happiness etched on their faces whilst the others look a little uncertain.

"Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, the Gasman and Angel," Jeb repeats, a faraway look in his eyes.