I woke up from my forced nap and didn't know where I was, which is, you know, always a good thing. I sighed. This was getting exhausting.

The one thing I did happen to notice was that I was in a dog crate.

Again.

"Really?" I muttered to myself. "Couldn't find something a little more original, could you Leslie?"

By now I was so used to it that it didn't even faze me. I mean, yeah, the nightmares and the terrible images that came with being trapped in a tightly enclosed space were no fun, but it happens so often to us that I honestly shouldn't even be surprised anymore when it does.

Next to me, I could see Fang – thank every single deity ever – and on my other side, Angel. The others were across from us, still conked out from the tranquilizer darts. I was still feeling it, myself. They must've laced them with some pretty heavy stuff, because my eyes were drooping like crazy.

"Fang," I whispered quietly, so quietly that I was pretty sure no one else could hear it. You could never be too sure – our every word might be being monitored. But I had to know Fang was okay.

He opened his eyes and slanted them over to me. His face was gaunt and tired. He gave me one silent nod of his head, and I let out a breath of relief.

"How do we get out of here?" he asked, and I shrugged.

"Still trying to come up with something."

He sighed softly. "Where did this Leslie guy even come from, anyway?"

"Not sure." Before he had showed up, our lives had been relatively quiet, and we had just gotten used to enjoying the privacy. We hadn't been attacked in months. It was running on a year now. Things had been great, up until this point. "He must've been hiding for a while," I said. "Preparing. Creating those monsters." I shivered, remembering the room where the Bieber-Hulks were put together.

"It'll be okay, Max," Fang said, and I looked over at him, my heart racing when our eyes made contact. "I've got your back."

I smiled and stuck my fingers through the bars of my cage in a feeble attempt to reach him. He stuck his fingers through his own bars, and our fingertips just barely brushed. But just that tiniest touch seemed to bring more energy back into my body.

And suddenly, I had a plan.

I didn't know how much time had passed when someone came into the room. It wasn't Leslie and it wasn't one of his grotesque creations. It was just another whitecoat. He walked down the row of our cages and stopped in front of mine, bending down so he could see me. "Dr. Gorman wants to see you."

I was about to ask who Dr. Gorman was when I remembered that it was Leslie's last name. "Really? Me? I'm honored," I said.

The whitecoat frowned and unlocked my cage. I crawled out of it, stretching my legs when I stood up, feeling pins and needles rush through them. The whitecoat tried to take my hands and tie them behind my back. That was when I turned, delivering a hard, fast kick to his stomach. He landed on the ground with a surprised grunt.

I had him tied up in no time, gagged so he couldn't speak or call for help. I searched his pockets for anything he might use to alert the other whitecoats that we were trying to escape, but there was nothing.

As quickly and silently as I could, I unlocked the rest of the flocks' cages and let them all free. Angel ran forward and locked the door so that no one could get in. I put a finger to my mouth, gesturing for my flock to be quiet, and they all nodded solemnly as I looked up at the ceiling.

Fang pointed to the air vents. I nodded and stepped up on top of one of the dog crates so I could reach the vents. Fang helped me unscrew the lid quietly, and one by one, we helped the rest of our flock up into the vents. I jumped up after Nudge at Fang's silent insistence, and then helped him up after me.

"What now?" Iggy whispered quietly.

"We get out," I said. "Follow me."

My sense of direction was telling me that the exit was north, so we started crawling forward, deeper into the vents. We crawled on our bellies, silent as mice. The AC was on, and it was ice cold up here. No worse than that time we went to Antarctica. I could deal.

When we reached a grate that looked down into a room, I motioned for my flock to stay still and be completely silent. I looked down through the grate, picking up bits and pieces of conversation.

"They will be vital to our mission," a whitecoat said. I saw Leslie pacing the room, his hands clasped behind his back. My teeth clenched at the sight of him. "The bird children are extraordinary assets. If we could only make them understand how important they are to the cause, perhaps we could get them on our side."

"Unlikely," Leslie said. You got that right, I thought to myself. "Max is stubborn. She will not give in, no matter what methods we might use to persuade her."

He stopped pacing. "Unless . . . ."

The other whitecoat looked at him. "Unless what, sir?"

"Unless we take the boy. The tall, dark one."

My blood ran cold.

I looked behind me at Fang. His face showed no expression.

"We've already tried that, sir," the other whitecoat said. She sounded impatient.

"No, no," Leslie said, beginning to pace again. "We must try something different. Something much worse. Something that will make Maximum concede to our demands."

My breath started to become short.

"When I was testing him," Leslie said, "I gave him a shot of Mesonox. I didn't get a chance to see if it worked."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"The negative effects of the drug. If it worked properly, he would be one hundred times stronger, faster, more durable. But if something were to go wrong . . . ."

Fang would go insane. I remembered that much from what Leslie had told us about it.

I looked back at Fang again. His face was stone cold, and he shook his head at me.

I turned my eyes back to Leslie and the other whitecoat. I knew we shouldn't be wasting time, we needed to get out of here, but I was compelled to stay and figure out what they were going to do to Fang.

So I could kill them before they even got the chance to touch him.