Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride, James Patterson does, sadly. If I owned it, Fang would have never left and Angel would still be the cute little girl we loved.

I'm back with the second installment and I'd like to thank Jessica Jay Jackson who reminded that I had posted this story and that it needed to be updated like I had originally intended it to be. It's about time I got off my butt to write again. Thank you!

Peeling my eyes open after yet another nightmare was the norm in the hellhole I lived in, but by the time I woke up I had already forgotten about the boy. That is, until I realized that his feathers were what had woken me up. Several of them were poking through his cage into mine near my nose. Unable to resist, I sneezed and jerked, hitting my head on the bars of the cage and accidentally kicking the other end with my foot.

Gritting my teeth against the shooting pain in my ankle and the pounding in my head, I grunted as pulled myself into a sitting position. I inspected my previously injured ankle and found that the swelling had gone down since I'd fallen asleep and the bruises were beginning to yellow. It was just sore now. Kicking the door of the cage hadn't helped.

Leaning my head back against the bars of the cage, I did a sweep of the room. The lighting was dim, indicating that it was probably still night outside. At least that meant some peace and quiet for a while. I was in short supply of that, seeing as the whitecoats apparently loved me as a subject.

I was just about to fall back asleep when the boy in the cage next to mine threw up. He was a tiny one, with whiskers and claws, and obviously younger than I was. I sighed and looked over, preparing myself to see him trying to hack up a fur ball like he'd done before.

I wasn't prepared to see the young boy convulsing and choking on his own vomit. I gasped and quickly pressed myself up against the far wall of my cage to get as far away from the boy as I could.

"Max?" the bird boy murmured and his feathers rustled lightly as he sat up in his cage. I tore my gaze away from the convulsing boy and looked at him instead. He must have been sleeping because he had to blink a couple of times to fully understand what was happening. Looking past me, he said, "Oh."

"He's dying," I said, the bile rising in my throat. I pushed it down. "It hasn't happened in a while."

"Experiments die all the time," he said, looking back at her.

I glared at him, irritated that he didn't understand what I meant. "Not where I can see them."

He looked up to stare at the metal ceiling of his cage. "Happened a lot where I was."

"You're not very good at comforting people are you?" I asked, still a little annoyed. It would have been nice to have a neighbor that could comfort me, but I guess the whitecoats hadn't gotten the memo.

"Just myself," the boy said shortly.

"Yeah well," I said, "Maybe you should learn."

He just shrugged and I rolled my eyes. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Better you than the boy."

I had forgotten about the boy, having gotten sucked into our conversation. I immediately felt bad and glanced back over at the experiment. He had stopped convulsing and was still. There was a gurgling noise coming from his throat. "He isn't…?"

"Not yet," the bird boy stated.

Frowning, I looked back at my neighbor. "You need a name."

He rose an eyebrow and looked at me incredulously. "Why?"

"So I can call you something other than just 'you'," I told him, "It gets a little old after a while."

"Pick."

"Pick what?"

"Pick one for me."

"Um, okay. Give me a second," I said, taken aback that he was going to make me give him a name. I immediately thought of the names that the whitecoats seemed to have and wrinkled my nose. None of those fit the boy, especially ones like Mark and Ian. He was special, like me, so he deserved a little more creativity.

"You said that you bit that whitecoat, right?" I asked him, thinking of the perfect name. The boy nodded affirmative and I grinned.

"Fang."

The boy glanced over at her, looking thoughtful.

"What?" I asked, "It's a lot better than Tooth. That's the other name I was thinking of."

"Fang is fine," the boy muttered, crossing his arms and returning to staring at the ceiling of his cage. I swear there must be something really interesting on it.

"Good, because I didn't have a backup plan after that," I said and sat back, trying to ignore the still form of my other neighbor.

/LINEBREAK/

It wasn't long before the lights in the room became bright again and a whitecoat strolled into the room with a cart. It was a woman this time, her long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and her face pinched into an expression of disgust as she stopped in front of the cage with the whisker boy. Squinting at the boy through the bars, she pulled a note pad from her coat pocket and began to write on it with a pen.

"Finally realized your experiment failed?" I couldn't help but snap at the uncaring woman.

What I wasn't expecting was a cold grin to form as she turned her head to look at me with icy blue eyes. "Oh, he isn't a failure. This was merely a phase in his newest transformation."

I made a face. What else could they have done to the poor boy? I watched as the woman poked her pen through the bars and jabbed the boy in the foot. Immediately, the boy snapped into an offensive position, launching himself at the bars. His fingers curled around the metal, sporting sharp-looking claws. The boy snarled harshly and the woman smiled triumphantly, returning to writing on her notepad.

Fang shifted in his cage and the boy whipped his head around, startling me with bright, yellow eyes and pupils narrowed to slits. The boy growled again and I saw a flash of sharp teeth. What the hell did the whitecoats do to him?

The woman stuffed her pad and pen back into her coat pocket and then turned the cart around to wheel it out of the room. She was almost out of the room before a metallic clanging sound rang in the room. The boy had ripped several bars from their slots and slammed into my cage on the way out.

I clenched my jaw as my ankle protested with a shot of pain. The boy leaped over my cage and landed on Fang's, his apparent target. Fang gave a startled grunt as he flattened himself to the bottom of the cage to keep away from the boy's reach.

By now, the woman had pulled a radio from her belt and was shouting orders into it. I hoped her reinforcements were going to show up soon because it wouldn't take long for the boy to peel back the top of Fang's cage and then rip him to shreds…And then I would be alone again.

"Hey!" I yelled at the boy, trying to keep from cringing as he turned his yellow gaze on me and halted from his pounding on the roof of Fang's cage. Every instinct within me was screaming at me for being so stupid, but it was a little too late for them to knock any sense into me.

I mimicked Fang and pressed myself to the bottom of the cage, tucking my wings close to my back. The cage jolted as the boy landed on it and I tried to ignore the churning of my nervous stomach.

"Max, are you stupid?" Fang hissed as the boy began to pound away on the top of my cage. I glowered at him through the bars of our cages and focused on the thunder of footsteps pounding into the room.

"Get him out of here," a familiar voice said and I risked raising my head to look. I spotted a whitecoat I'd seen before, a man with short brown hair and glasses. He was usually a bit nicer than the rest of them. He'd said his name was Jeb, something that whitecoats don't do.

Two of the big wolf men, Erasers, grabbed the boy from behind. Snarls were emitted from his throat and he tried to free his trapped arms, but the Erasers were stronger than him. They threw him into a bigger cage with thicker bars than his old one and then proceeded to wheel him out of the room.

Jeb turned to the sour-faced woman. "Get two new cages for our avian experiments. A new gown for the female would be ideal as well."

Avian? I didn't know what he meant but I would put it on my list of things to ask later. I looked down at my old white dress and remembered that I had never been given a new one and the splatter of blood had long since dried and crusted on the fabric. "It's about time," I muttered softly. Fang snorted lightly, but the whitecoats hadn't heard me.

The woman nodded, looking as disgruntled as ever and she disappeared. Jeb turned and he strode toward our cages. When he was close he knelt so that his face was level with the door to my cage and gave me a smile. "Are you okay, Max?"

I sat up and lifted my chin. "It takes a little more than creepy eyes and sharp claws to ruffle my feathers."

I could practically feel Fang rolling his eyes. He knew that I'd been just afraid of the experiment as he had been. I glanced at him and caught him just as he finished rolling his eyes. Hah! I had been right.

"Good," Jeb said, glancing between us. He looked satisfied and stood as the woman came back into the room, pulling a cart with two new cages sitting on it. Jeb backed away from our cages and the woman stepped toward us. She pulled something from her pocket. A needle. Perfect. I hate needles. Cringing, I looked away as the woman opened my cage door and pressed the needle into my bicep.

A moment later, I was out.

I love writing Max Ride fanfiction. It's definitely one of the easiest fandom to write about. I honestly don't know how many chapters I'm shooting for with this, but I would definitely like to get the rest of the Flock in here. That's my goal for right now. I'm also not sure when the next update will be. I have other fanfics I've been neglecting that are in need of some serious attention as well so I guess we'll see. I'm sorry if there are any inconsistencies between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. They were written nearly two years apart so there's bound to be a difference! If there are any mistakes feel free to review or PM me, because it needs to be fixed.

I love feedback! Please review!