Chapter Two

(Max)

A day later

I stared at the laptop screen in disbelief. Nearly an hour ago Nudge had found information on the One Light that no one could understand. We knew that it was classified information and not just junk because the file was blocked by five different passwords and took Nudge almost a day's worth of hacking to get through.

"There's barely any words; only symbols." Nudge said, her brow furrowed. "It must be written in some code. There has to be a cheat sheet somewhere, but it'll probably take me a while… I don't even know how to type these symbols into the computer!"

I ran my fingers through my hair. "Well it's a start. Just keep trying to read it, maybe something will jump out at you."

We were still in the same woods that we were in the day before and barely anything had been found. When Nudge first found the file she was excited just because she got through the system, but we had looked at the screen to a sorry sight. Only the first sentence of the file was readable, Our Lord, Our Light, Our Savior. The rest of the screen was filled with odd text and really just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.

For an hour everyone took turns looking at the text, well, everyone except for Iggy, who I could tell was getting more and more bored by the second. After Nudge had another thirty minutes of research she slammed the laptop shut and groaned.

"It died." Nudge stood up and looked straight at me with an annoyed look. "Max, I'm hungry, tired, and we need to charge the laptop. We need to find a new place to stay tonight; I'm sick of staying here." Almost immediately her eyes widened and she shut her mouth as result the look on my face. It took me a second to realize that it was Nudge that just tried to order me around. I needed to be smart with this.

"Erm…uh."

I'm the next Einstein.

I regained my composure. "Okay, but we have to get money first."

Everyone smiled at me and was packing their things in a flash. Everything was being shoved into our backpacks and wings were being shaken out in of our backs. I unfolded my wings and closed my eyes in pleasure. It felt like a nice good stretch after not moving for weeks.

"Uhm, Max? How are we going to get the money?" Iggy asked, thowing his iPod into the front pocket of his backpack.

"We pick out the biggest jerk we see in a crowd." Dylan said with a shrug.

At first I wanted to shoot Dylan's idea of stealing money down, but I truly had no idea how we'd get money. There was really no way for us to earn money, and it wasn't really the first time we'd be stealing money. I could only agree with Dylan.

"Another question I'm just going to put out there; what country are we in?" Gazzy asked.

That one had both me and Dylan stumped. When we left Paris, I really had no destination in mind; my only goal was to get as far away from that disaster as possible. "We'll find out when we reach civilization, I guess." I replied.

"Are you guys ready?" I asked with a tiny smile on my face. It's almost been three days since we've all flown.

"Yes!" Everyone shouted in unison.

I laughed and took a running start. I felt my wings spread out of instinct and enjoyed as every little feather moved with the wind. My legs moved faster and faster and then suddenly my feet didn't even touch the ground. I soared up past the trees and breathed in the cold air. I looked back and watched as my flock followed in a tight V formation behind me. I spread my arms out and smiled. It felt so good to fly again. The air rejuvenated me; the wind peeling off layers of depression that had been forming for days.

I looked beyond the vast forest before me and saw a giant green, white, and red flag blowing in the wind. "What countries' flag is that?" I asked Dylan.

Dylan focused his eyes on the flag, "I think its Italy's."

"Out of all of your amazing talents, is speaking Italian one of them?" Iggy joked to Dylan.

"Yeah, right." Nudge giggled.

Dylan smiled and began speaking fluently in some foreign language. As much as I failed to keep the surprise off of my face, my voice was surprisingly nonchalant. "That'll come in use."

Three hours later

"She looks like a bi—"

"DYLAN." I cut him off, looking at Nudge and Gazzy.

"Sorry," He said, his face growing red. "But I wouldn't mind taking her money. She's been making very rude comments about Gazzy's scent."

Iggy snorted, "I don't blame her."

"And she said that your eyes were creeping her out, Iggy." Dylan replied.

"How rude!"

Gazzy laughed, "I don't blame her." He said in a mocking tone.

Iggy and Gazzy began bickering like an old married couple while Nudge giggled in the background. "Guys, shut up and take it out on the lady." I rolled my eyes and watched as the snobby fat woman ate some creamy pastries across us in the café we were sitting in.

"Okay, her purse is hanging off the back of her chair. Iggy you have steady hands, you'll sneak up behind her and grab the bag. Dylan, seeing as you're the only one who can distract the woman, go up and talk to her."

Dylan stood up with a huge smile on his face and walked over to the woman. She looked up with a scowl on her face at first, ready to yell at whoever dared interrupt her, but when she saw Dylan she looked like she'd won a year's worth of free pastries. They both spoke fluently to each other for quite some time. Dylan seemed to be saying that the woman reminded him of a beloved relative, but I couldn't understand anything else.

The woman was so entranced with looking at Dylan and just hearing his voice that she didn't even notice tall Iggy walk up behind her and simply grab the bag off of her chair. He walked back over to us and dumped out the bags contents onto the table. I grabbed the wallet and all of the change that we could see on the table. We shoved everything else back into the bag. Nudge giggled when she saw a zip-lock bag of even more cream-filled snacks in the purse's contents. Gazzy snatched the zip-lock bag before Nudge put it back in the purse.

Iggy took the purse back and set it on the ground behind the woman, who was still completely oblivious to the teens stealing all of her money.

"Let's go." I said. Everyone slipped out of the café and we stared at Dylan from outside the huge window. Dylan acted as if he was missing some important meeting and ran out of the café, where the fat woman was sitting utterly confused.

"Do you know how to count Italian money, too?" I asked Dylan.

He shook his head, "I'm not that awesome."

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn't hide the smile from breaking out across my face.

"Okay, let's go find a hotel. It looks like we have enough money to feed a hundred bird kids." We all turned the corner and followed Dylan as he tried to find the nearest hotel and restaurant.

(Fang)

"What's up, Tall-Dark-and-Intimidating?" Maya asked with a smirk as she walked into the motel room. She took a bite out of the sandwich she was holding and sat down on the couch across from me. "Why didn't you go out to eat with everyone else? Don't bird kids need a mass amount of food or something?" She shook her magenta streaked hair out of her face and tossed a half of her sandwich over to me.

I looked up at her and shook my head, "I'm trying to find out about the One Light. Hacking into systems is really hard without Nudge." I tossed my laptop aside and leaned back against the wall. "Is everyone else still eating?"

"Yeah; Ratchet got into a fight with the waiter saying that the prices were a rip-off. The four of them aren't going to be back for a while." Maya took another bite of her sandwich. "Eat up; I can practically see your ribs. You look like a mistreated dog."

I rolled my eyes and took a bite of the sandwich. "Happy?" I hadn't had much time to do anything but search for the One Light, which had basically been a dead end.

Maya lay down on the couch and turned on the old TV. She flicked around the channels for a little bit before stopping at the English dubbed news.

A French reporter spoke into the camera with a thick accent. "France officials are still in recon to try to fix the Paris terrorist disaster that happened last week. So far thirty-seven people have been declared dead and seventeen people are still missing. Almost half of the wreckage has been searched through, but the other half has still been untouched. The chanced of finding the missing people seems very grim."

I looked over to Maya who sat up and began listening intently to the TV. Did they find Angel yet?

"Turn it off, Maya." I said.

She shook her head. "No, I want to know what's going on."

I groaned, but didn't fight the case because it wasn't worth it. Maya continued to watch the news as I just sat on the ground and stared into space. Ratchet, Star, Kate, and Holden walked into the room talking about their lunch.

"I told that guy not to mess with me. I knew we were getting ripped off." Ratchet said as he tossed his wallet down onto one of the two beds. Star and Kate rolled their eyes and sat down next to Maya on the couch. Holden sat down in the corner away from everyone and cracked open a small book. Maya ignored everyone and continued to watch the news.

Minutes passed and the room became louder and louder as Ratchet, Star, and Kate talked about pointless stuff. I could tell Maya was getting more and more annoyed by the noise.

"Guys, shut up." She said.

The volume in the room stayed the same.

"Yo, shut up." She said again, glaring at them. Star raised her eyebrow at Maya and continued talking.

"Shut up!" Maya yelled. Everyone instantly went silent and stared at Maya. She turned the volume on the TV up.

"The Doomsday Group's leader, who calls himself the One Light has made a public announcement today." The French reporter said. "He has stated that what his supporters had done in Paris was a freak accident."

The TV switched to a clip of a small man speaking at the top of the podium. He was short, fat, and had a huge white mustache. He was nothing at all what I expected the One Light to look like.

"Hello, hello. I am George Lockmason. I do not even dare to call myself the One Light, I am only his assistant. The accident that occurred in Paris a week ago was not at all instructed to happen by the One Light. The Doomsday Group does not know what went wrong with Mark. We think he had physiological issued that had been unforeseen by the people doing our company issued physicals. We apologize for everything that has been damaged and the Doomsday Group will compensate for all of the damages."

Everyone stared at the TV in disbelief. The room was silent, waiting on every single word this Lockmason man said.

"The One Light hopes to make it up to you though! We will be having a new rally – heavily guarded of course. At this rally we will introduce our latest experiment that will help our planet's future! Information on the rally will be released as time goes on! Support the One Light, the person who truly knows what's best for our world! Only one clue will be released now about the upcoming rally: G. 77. The Doomsday Group hopes to see you!"

The TV screen changed back into the French reporter who was debating with another reporter about what the possible outcome of the rally.

Everyone in the room stared at each other. "G. 77?" Star asked.

"I don't have a clue." Said Holden, who had moved over to the group to watch the TV.

I groaned and rubbed my eyes. "I think I have an idea."

"Well, go on." Maya said.

"They're going to introduce Generation 77 mutants to the public. And I bet my wings it's not going to be pretty."