Okay… I have no excuse for why I updated so late. I could go into the whole "I'm so extraordinarily busy I had not one single freaking minute this week to write thing" but I won't bore you with that. Heh.

As an apology for the long time you've all had to wait for an update, here's an extra long chapter. (:

Chapter 14: Expected

We sat on the floor of the cave, the Flock and I, not talking, just sitting. Why do we spend half of our time in caves these days, you may ask? I have no freaking idea. Maybe it's because we don't really have a purpose – we're still on the run, but we aren't trying to accomplish anything. At the moment.

Fang was still missing, and it was starting to worry me. He had been gone since last night, and it was already mid-afternoon. I understood how badly I had hurt him, but he had never been missing for this long before…

But then again, I had never done anything of this magnitude to hurt him before…

Angel sighed. I guessed that she had probably been reading my thoughts. I'm sure it's annoying to have a bunch of depressed birdkids whose thoughts you had to read floating around in one room, but then again, it wasn't necessary for her to read our thoughts, was it? Couldn't she just block them out or something?

Well it's kind of hard to do that when you're shouting them…

Screw you.

Angel snickered. Language, Max.

Wait – do you even know what that means?

She wiggled her eyebrows, and I groaned.

Our little mind-fighting fest was interrupted by the sound of a helicopter near the entrance to the cave. Wait – a helicopter? What the hell?

I hastily jumped to my feet and hurried towards the noise, Iggy, Gazzy, Nudge, and Angel following close behind. The helicopter was hovering in the air, and a ladder extended from one of the doors. Tensing, I prepared for fight, but Angel's voice barged into my head again. They're not trying to fight us, Max. Do you really think Erasers would use a helicopter?

She had a good point, but I wasn't about to admit it.

A tall man stepped down the ladder, reaching his hand up to help the woman who was descending behind him. The man looked strangely familiar, but I couldn't quite place him. I finally got a glimpse of the woman's face as she reached the bottom of the ladder…

And almost retched.

I knew this woman.

She was the woman in the picture that Gazzy slept with every night.

The woman that cradled the small baby with a sweet cowlick.

The woman that sold her two children to Itex for $10,000.

The woman that was Gazzy and Angel's mother.

. . .

The couple, now holding hands, stepped down from the ladder, and I was struck by how much they both looked like Angel and the Gasman. I didn't dare turn around to see their faces, but slowly reached out my arms so that I was gripping Angel's hand tightly, and had a steady hold on Gazzy's shoulder. I could feel them both shaking.

Stepping forward, with all of the Flock (well, almost all of it. Fang was still who-knows-where) filling in behind me, I got right up in their faces, and demanded, "What the hell do you think you're doing here?"

Normally, I wouldn't have been quite so hostile on meeting the Flock's parents, but one look at them and I knew they were bad news. Their white lab coats had the Itex logo printed on the pocket, and that was enough to set off the warning bells.

The man looked startled at my aggression, but the woman just shook her head. "Well, Maximum - "

"Max," I spat.

"Well, Max, I was expecting a more welcoming reply, seeing as we have come to help you. However, since it seems that I will not be receiving one, I shall continue on as if I didn't even hear you."

"We don't need any help from you." I was seething. The nerve of these people, to just reenter Angel and Gazzy's lives after almost a decade, and expect a welcome!

"Hmm. Well, in that case, we'd best be on our way…"

The woman turned around and deliberately made her way back to the helicopter.

"Just tell us what you want." Angel's voice was cold and filled with loathing.

The tone of her voice made the man hesitate. His wife looked like she had every intention of leaving right then, but at a look from the man, slowly turned around, her face unreadable.

"We've come to offer you a deal."

. . .

Now if those words don't make you pause, I don't know what will. I actually laughed out loud. "A deal? Really? That's the best way you can come up with to get us to do your bidding? You whitecoats used to use force… Erasers, mass attacks, but I guess you outgrew that, huh?"

The woman glowered. "You may call me Dr. Evelyn Castillo. This is my husband, Dr. Richard Castillo. We are the head researchers at Itex. You may be familiar with this company."

"Familiar? Well, yes, I did spend the first eight years of my life locked in a cage at one of their facilities, but other than that, not too familiar…"

Dr. Castillo ignored my jibe. "We have been overseeing you and your Flock since birth. My husband was the one who initially had the idea of creating human-avian hybrids. He proposed this idea to Dr. Frank Williams, who was, at the time, the director of Itex. Dr. Williams did not agree with this idea. He thought that experimenting on human beings was sick and cruel. Our idea was rejected.

"But my husband and I felt that the idea had promise. We took it to one of Itex's less-known branches, in Death Valley, California. There, we met Jeb Batchelder, who was interested in assisting us in our experiment. He was currently working at a hospital in Washington, D.C., and he agreed to help us retrieve newborn children from the hospital that we could experiment on.

The woman continued. "I was puzzling over how to inject the Avian DNA into the experiments one day. We had been planning on injecting the DNA when the children were two to three weeks old, but then I thought – what if, instead of injecting the Avian DNA into the bloodstream when the children were a few weeks old, we injected it into the mother's bloodstream when she was eight months pregnant?"

I felt sick.

"So Dr. Batchelder found three young women, all who were at different stages of pregnancy. He injected the DNA into the first woman when she was eight months pregnant. She had the baby successfully, but the doctors at the hospital told her that the baby hadn't made it. The infant was brought to Death Valley, and was soon joined by the two others, whose mothers had also been told that they had passed away (Although one mother didn't believe it. She insisted on protesting that her child was missing. That was your mother, I believe, James?)"

Iggy stoically didn't reply, but his face was white and his lips were trembling – with sadness or rage, I don't know.

"We were amazed at the results we got from these three human-avian hybrids. They had lived for nearly three years, which was already a medical miracle. We decided to make another hybrid. Dr. Batchelder successfully injected the DNA into another child from the hospital – Monique, if I'm not mistaken – and she turned out to be a success, also. I then decided that I wanted to be a part of this revolution, too. Since it was unfortunately too late to fuse avian DNA into my body, I became pregnant, and at eight months, Dr. Batchelder injected the DNA. A month later, I had my first child, Gregory Castillo."

My head whipped around towards the Gasman, and I saw that his eyes were wide, drinking in everything about his newfound mother.

Dr. Castillo looked like she was tearing up. I was sure that she was milking this for all it was worth. "He was a success also, and I wasn't surprised. When I became pregnant again, I knew that I wanted my second child to also have wings. On April 29, Angel Castillo was born. My first daughter."

I noticed that both times, she had neglected mentioning that she had sold each of her children to Itex for $10,000.

"She was beautiful. They all were. To me, the entire batch of hybrids was like my own children. I looked after them, took care of them, for the first part of their lives. Dr. Batchelder, my husband, and I showed Dr. Williams, who was still the director of Itex, what we had done, and this time, he was very impressed. He gave us money to conduct research on these six extraordinary children. Everything was running smoothly until Batchelder turned traitor and ripped you six away from me. I was heartbroken. I had loved you."

I flinched. She sounded so… earnest. It was hard not to believe her.

But I had heard this crap a million times before, and wasn't affected by it.

I was about to make some cynical remark, when Dr. Castillo held out her arms. "And now here you all are. Maximum. Nicholas. James. Monique. Gregory. Angel. My children."

If she had expected us to all come rushing forward into a soppy hug, she thought wrong. Looking hurt, she dropped her arms to her sides.

"So what do you really want?" I demanded, purposely skirting around the whole parent subject. "You come here and tell us this sappy story, and then expect us to go along with whatever you want us to do. So what is it? What's this so-called deal?"

The man spoke up for the first time. "We're here to offer you a home. Food. Comforts. Anything you want at your request."

"Ah… sure. And what's in it for you?"

He coughed uncomfortably, and his wife took over. "A comfortable home in exchange for your consent to come to the lab once a week for certain tests and experiments." She paused again, as if expecting noisemakers and elated cheers.

I rolled my eyes. "Ok, then. Count us out."

"Are you sure that's what is best for the whole Flock, Maximum? Or are you only thinking about yourself again?"

Her tone made me pause. I turned around to look at my Flock.

And was shocked at what I saw.

RnR?