Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride. But mayyyybe, if all of you little boys and girls review my stories enough, one day I might…. Write some more of this story But, actually, I do own the new character introduced here, soooo, ya know, here's another reason to REVIEW! Tell me all about your opinions of him. Just… anything, kay? Xoxo Nico'sGirl
AN: Just to explain things a little, this story takes place two years after Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, with the events in the three other books after it never happening. So that makes Max, Fang, and Iggy 16, Nudge 13, Gazzy 10, and Angel 8.
A creak. An infinitesimal little creak. But it's just enough to startle Nudge, who has barely been asleep the whole night. She sits up quickly, her heavy, black curls quivering. Thirteen years have trained her to be vigilant. She looks around, her pupils expanding to take in as much as they can in the dark. Then it comes again, a creak. Creaaak.
Nudge takes a shaky breath. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. She thinks. I'm in Arizona, I'm safe, no one can get me here. I'm being paranoid. She tries to calm herself, but ends up rising from the pull-out couch and walks slowly into the kitchen, clasping her dark hands together and chewing on her lower lip. Her gut churns with the sensation that she is not alone. Then, Nudge rounds the corner and sees something that makes her heart stop.
The door is wide open.
Mrs. Martinez specifically locked the door a few hours ago, and now it lies open, with a pin sticking out of the lock from the outside. Someone broke in. Nudge opens her mouth and takes in a massive amount of air for a scream. But before she can let out that wall of sound, a hand clamps over her mouth and suddenly she is being dragged out the door. Her hands grasp wildly for the doorframe, but miss. The hand over her mouth is conspicuously furry. An Eraser. Nudge screams and screams and screams, but no sound escapes the cork of the hand. She then lies limp, hoping to attack once the grip on her relaxes a little. But the Eraser continues to carry her out across the lawn, until they are down the road, past the mailbox. Then, it stops. It just stands there, one had around Nudge's mouth, the other around her waist. It shakes a little. Then a voice.
"I'm sorry. I… I can't do this." It's a male voice. Suddenly the hands are gone from her body.
Nudge swivels around to attack, but something stops her. The Eraser is in the process of transforming back into a regular guy. Nudge hesitates for a second. What the hell is stopping me? She thinks. Just to get that stupid thought out of her head, she sends a flying tornado kick into his face.
"Well then you better start explaining." She hisses, saying something that hopefully Max would approve of. All she ever tries to do is channel Max. Like Fang used to say, WWMD?
The guy, now fully un-Erasered, grabs at his face. Besides being, well, and Eraser, the guy is pretty… hot. Nudge purses her lips, a little ashamed to be thinking that way about an Eraser. But… He can't be much older than her. He looks to be about 5' 10" , with blond hair, and blue eyes. He looks strong, but not like one of those creepy over-muscled bodybuilder freaks.
"They… They sent me to take one of them. One of you, the Avian hybrids. They wanted the leader, the blonde one, but… I saw you coming and I… panicked." He is panting heavily, in an almost doglike way. "I'm sorry."
Nudge punches him in a fierce uppercut. "Like hell you are. I know all about you new Erasers. You're freaking machines, just doing what the School tells you without minds of your own. So don't try to make me believe that you're sorry, I know its just a lie from the School. You maggots don't feel anything." Nudge spits at him, and then kicks him in the side with a blazing roundhouse. The sound of a rib cracking resonates in the night air.
The Eraser guy doubles over, clutching his side. "Please, please stop. I don't want to hurt you." He chokes out. "This was a mistake, please just go back to the house and forget I ever came. I… I just can't do it!" The guy looks near tears, and for a second, Nudge almost feels pity for him, and feels bad for the pain she's inflicting. But, she thinks, he's an Eraser. Everything he's saying is something the School taught him to say for this situation. He's probably just waiting for his helicopter to come carry me away like Angel. But then, Nudge looks at him again. He's obviously in a lot of pain, and not a threat right now. She might as well practice her negotiating and interrogating skills.
"Well," she grasps for more things to ask. "Why does the School want me?"
The guy actually musters a laugh. "Why do you think? You and your friends are destroying all their buildings and equipment. You're slowly taking them out." There's something that sounds almost like admiration in his voice.
Then, she notices something. "You said 'they' instead of 'we'. About the School, I mean. Don't they Erasers count themselves as part of it?"
"The others do." He says, a bitterness echoing in his tones.
"And you're not like the others?" Nudge tries to lay on the sarcasm just as thickly as Max would.
"No." The guy whispers. Nudge is careful to notice that he no longer clutches his side in pain, and almost subconsciously prepares for a counterattack. "I hate them."
"Oh yeah? And why's that? Aren't they your sick little teammates?" Nudge puts her hand on her hips and gives her most intimidating Max-esque glare.
"Because something went wrong when they made me." The guy says. "And I'm damn proud to be a screw-up. I'm proud that the scientists didn't spend as much time on me as they should have. Because when they hastily made another model of the Eraser 3.0, they didn't completely alter my brain. So while the others are doing as the School tells them with barely enough judgment to decide what to eat for freaking breakfast, I can think for myself all the way. And I know that what the School is doing and what the Erasers are being made to do is wrong." His eyes glisten with enthusiasm as he denounces his creators. Nudge thinks he's probably been waiting a long time to find someone he can say this to.
"How come the School doesn't know that you have free will, if you're telling me the truth?" Nudge says, but she finds she's asking it more out of genuine curiosity than as an attempt to prove who pulls his strings.
"I hid it well. And I didn't even realize I was different as a kid, because, honestly, no kid really thinks for themselves anyway." He gives a wry little smile, one that would almost be cute if he wasn't, you know, an Eraser. "I do what they tell me, but they've never ordered me to do something this…. Drastic. So before I always followed through, because they ends justified the means. But… I just couldn't do it this time okay? I'll have to go back and tell them I failed and that, for starters, I grabbed the wrong kid, and then I screwed up even more, and let that one escape, and… I'll be punished. But, it'll be worth it, because I just couldn't do that to you." Nudge's eyes widen a little at this comment. "To any of you, I mean." He corrects quickly, appearing to be more than a little surprised at the comment as well.
"Right." Nudge inhales. "Right then." She wonders vaguely what she should do next, but her brain is a little preoccupied with… him. "I… Hey." She says, an idea coming to mind. "I don't know your name. Tell me your name."
"Alex. My name is Alex. A little… anticlimactic for a big, bad Eraser, I know. I guess you can just blame the lack of creativity of those scientists at the School." He says with a shrug. "But, hey, I don't know yours."
"Why not? The School knows all our names. They were kind of a, you know, presence in all our early lives." Once again, she tries to utilize that Maximum wit.
"They know, but they don't tell us. I think they feel that giving you names just makes you more like people. And as long as they feel that you aren't people, they don't feel bad about what they're doing to you. They don't feel bad about any of the experiments that way. If it doesn't have a name, it's not a person." Alex shakes his head. "It's goddamn pathetic."
Nudge sighs, almost a little hurt by this. Even though its just a small thing, its another betrayal from the School, just another thing that makes the list a little longer, makes it all that much more unbearable. First they torture and hunt them, okay, but they won't even admit that they have freaking names? I'm not a damn bacterium! Nudge fumes within. Then, she sees the look of expectancy upon Alex's face. "Nudge. My name was… Monique, back when I was born and my parents had me. But ever since I've been with the school, I've been Nudge." Nudge shrugs a little, as if it doesn't hurt at all that she's lost her name, the one thing her parents got to give her before she was snatched away from them for a life of cruel experimentation. "I saw a video of them once, you know. Them asking for me back. I saw it in one of the School's files, in one of those things we always find by 'accident'. It was probably just another one of the School's sick pranks, you know, the ones they always play on us where they give these bizarre bits of information to lead us on, to test us, you know, and they never make any sense, and the whole operation just gets more freaking convoluted and…" Nudge pauses. "Oh, God, I'm rambling again. Sorry. It's hard to be self-conscious but not self-aware, you know? Like, I'm always obsessed with looking bad to people, but I never know when I am…. And I think I'll just stop now."
"Don't be sorry." Alex says. "And I don't mind if you talk a lot. I like listening." They both stare at each other for a second, Nudge barely breathing.
"I think I should ignore that comment." She says.
"No, I don't think you should." Alex says, and he advances a step closer.
Nudge stiffens. "Look, Eraser, I don't think it's a good idea for you to come any closer." She warns.
"But I think it is…. Monique." Then, suddenly Alex is on her. Like, on her, on her. Nudge even thinks about screaming, but all thoughts leave her mind as he kisses her. Her first kiss. Nudge always thought that her first kiss would take place after they'd defeated the School and the bird kids could be accepted into society, with some prince of a European country who wanted to marry her and fund her fashion line and give her all the romance in the world. NOT in Arizona in the middle of the night when she'd just been dragged out of bed and almost kidnapped with an ERASER.
But, still, Nudge can't help but notice how good he feels. How warm. And soft. And sweet. How perfect and sublime it all is, even if it isn't what she wanted. But, now matter how right Alex is making her heart feel, Nudge still knows that it's wrong. So, as much as it pains her to do so, she pushes him away.
"No." she says, trying to be firm, and hoping he doesn't notice the fine quiver in her voice. "I can't. You can't. This is wrong and I… I think you should go now. That was wrong."
"I'm sorry." He says. "You're… you're right. That was totally out of line of me. We're enemies, after all." He winks.
"Don't wink at me." Nudge hisses, feeling a sudden rush of aggression at his boldness, the way he just knows that he can snap a finger and get her to come running. "Just… just get the hell out of here." She glares at him until he starts to back away. Nudge feels a little regret for pulling such a crazy mood swing on him, but she just has to get it through his head: That was wrong and ridiculous and they should have nothing to do with each other.
Alex backs away slowly. "Okay. Okay." He turns, walks away, turns back when he's halfway to the woods, and says. "Just don't forget me, okay? I swear I'll be back."
Then he disappears into the forest, and he's gone.
Nudge stumbles through the dark, back into the house, and through the kitchen. She hesitates before getting back in to bed, her mind racing. She runs a trembling hand through her hair and can only think to herself Oh my God, what have I done? What have I started? Her mind is full of Alex, and it counts all the things she did tonight that would break Max's heart. She gets into bed as quietly and gently as possible, doing her best not to wake Gazzy and Angel. Then she closes her eyes and resigns herself to dreams.