A/N Okay, I'm gonna ask something of you guys. Basically, I generally write each chapter over the course of a few hours between about midnight and three in the morning. Which means that once I've finished I'm not really in the mood to proofread, so I tend to just post straight off the bat. Now, usually I'm anal enough about errors to notice if I've made any as I'm writing, but sometimes I miss them, so if you pick up on any mistakes (particularly if I've messed up and used a British word that no American in their right mind would ever say) then do let me know. :P

Being back in the sky felt awesome. I mean, I'd gone flying with Dylan over the last week, but that had just been aimless, flying for the sake of it. Which is cool and all, but it's like the difference between a normal person going for a walk about on any old day and then deciding to actually go somewhere specific; having a purpose made the flying feel like it had more of a meaning, and there was an incredible exhilaration that came with that. For a while, at least, all I had to think about was the journey. I didn't have to worry about what we were going to do when we got there, or how long we could go before having to stop for food, or the fact that we'd left Total in charge of the house – I just had to fly.

The flock was spread out in no particular formation, floating around as they found different air currents and weaved back and forth along their course. Nudge and Gazzy were definitely looking more and more like themselves again as the journey went by, and Iggy seemed a lot calmer than he had been now that he had something to focus on. The small shape of the gang's van moved steadily along the snaking road below us, and Fang flew a little ahead so that he could stay in their sights, watching for any problems further along the track. I tilted my face up into the wind, almost expecting to see Angel winding through the sky over my head, dipping her hands down into clouds as we passed and making polite one-sided conversation with any birds that went by.

I sighed and closed my eyes briefly, trying to breathe out the ache that seemed to be pooling in my chest. But thinking about Angel led me to think about Ella, another person I'd managed to lose; could she fly now? Had she had wings grafted onto her back? Was she flying at this very moment, wheeling through the sky and wondering why she hadn't given herself up before? Or had the whitecoats messed up the grafting with her just like they did with Ari? Had she been fitted with awkward, painful wings which had trouble flying straight? Or maybe she didn't have wings at all; maybe they'd turned her into one of the mindless drones of the One Light we'd seen in Paris. Maybe they'd locked her in a dog crate and were performing awful tests on her. Maybe she was dead.

I shook my head sharply and forced those thoughts to the back of my head, where hopefully they'd stop kicking me between the eyes for a bit.

'Are you alright?' Dylan asked from beside me, his voice stifled a little by the wind rushing in my ears. I glanced sideways at him.

'I'm fine.'

He flew in closer.

'You didn't look fine.'

I resisted the urge to growl in annoyance.

'I said that I'm fine.'

Suddenly he wheeled around in front of me, adjusting his wing strokes so that he could fly backwards. Despite the fact that he obviously wasn't happy about something, a small part of me was impressed; let's not forget that the guy hadn't even been able to fly forwards not too long ago.

'What is wrong with you?' His voice was angry and his face wasn't looking any cheerier. I felt my hands tighten into fists.

'Okay, you wanna talk? Let's talk,' I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him a little way out, further from the rest of the flock. Then I dropped my grip on him, twisting to watch him as we flew.

'You're asking what's wrong with me?'

'Yes. Yes, I am. You know, ever since Fang showed up you've been holding me at arm's length. After everything he did to you, after everything I did for you…'

'Well jeez, sorry Dylan, I didn't realise I owed you my full attention every minute of the day!' I spat.

'That's not what I'm asking you for! But you were having feelings for me, don't pretend you weren't, and then the gang turns up on our doorstep and suddenly you won't even talk to me properly.'

I scoffed.

'Who are you to say that I was having feelings for you? I'm pretty certain that's my call to be making, thanks. And you know what? I'm not sure that I was. Maybe I just liked having someone there; someone I could talk to about stuff and someone I didn't have to be strong around all the time. So what if I liked that? Everyone likes that, everyone needs that. But it does not mean that I had feelings for you!'

'So what, you just thought you'd lead me on?' This was the most riled I'd ever seen Dylan before. I felt like screaming in frustration.

'I didn't lead you on! God, the number of times I told you that you were just programmed to love me, that it wasn't real. The number of times I tried to put you at a distance and you wouldn't take it. How the hell was that leading you on?'

He opened his mouth to retort, but our argument was interrupted by Fang's shout.

'Problem.' I turned to see him dropping down towards the van below, signalling to Kate, who was driving, to watch out ahead. I peered forwards, pulling a face when I saw what Fang had seen.

'Ah. Yes, that could be a problem.'

You know the huge rocky ridges you get alongside those massively long rural roads? The ones that come about when the person making the road thinks 'hey look, a mountain; maybe I'll just plough straight through it'? They're cool-looking and all, but when whatever's holding them in place gives way and boulders spill out across the road effectively blocking you way, they become decidedly less cool-looking and decidedly more inconvenient.

'No way the van's getting over that,' Gazzy commented helpfully as we all stood staring at the pile of rocks that had been spewed across our track. I pressed my lips together tightly; we'd been on the move for about four and a half hours, and it had only just started getting light. Clearly this had happened during the night and no one else had been along this way since.

'No duh,' said Ratchet. 'Whadda we do now?'

'Start clearing?' Nudge suggested. She didn't seem thrilled about the idea, and looked relieved when I shook my head.

'It would take us ages.'

'We could blow it up,' Iggy said, his face looking worryingly cheerful about the prospect.

'With what?' I asked, my eyes narrowed. 'You didn't bring anything along with you.' Silence. 'Right?' More silence. 'Right?'

'Explosives won't work,' Dylan cut in, surveying the rockslide with a calculating look on his face. 'The part of the ridge that's still intact isn't stable enough to withstand a blast. If you did that then the whole thing could come down on top of us.'

We all stared at our latest obstacle, trying to think of a way to get around it.

'Ooh! How about this?' said Nudge squealed suddenly, earning a scowl from Ratchet when the noise made him wince. 'We can't move the rocks, so maybe we can move the van! If we could all get around it, we could lift it up and fly it over.'

I frowned at the van.

'Perhaps,' I mused. 'It'll be tricky lifting it straight up off a cold start, though.'

'Kate could do it,' Star announced.

I turned to look at Kate.

'What do you think?'

A crease appeared between her eyebrows.

'I could lift it, no problem. But I wouldn't fancy my chances of balancing it across those boulders.'

'We wouldn't need you to carry it over. Just get it up off the ground and help give it the upwards momentum we need to get it airborne.'

She grinned.

'Now that I can manage.'

I clapped my hands.

'Right then, everyone with wings: in the sky. We're all going to position ourselves around the van. Grab hold wherever you can-'

'If we wind down the windows then you'll have something to hold onto,' Holden called out.

'Brilliant. So we're going to get a good grip on the van, then on three Kate's gonna boost it up for us. When she does, everyone pull up hard with your arms and push down hard with your wings.' I paused and thought for a second, then added, 'And everyone on the ground get out of the way asap, just in case.'

My last comment was met with a bunch of unamused faces. I shrugged.

'Precautionary measure. Okay guys, asses in the air.'

They did as I'd said, gathering around the vehicle and grabbing a handful of metal. Kate crouched low on the shotgun side, placing her hands a good meter or so apart on the underside of the van.

'On three,' I called.

'Max?' Gazzy peered at me from the across the roof. 'Do you mean actually on three this time?'

I chuckled. For those of you who haven't been keeping up, a lot of the time when we were on the run from Erasers the words 'on three' tended to mean more 'right now'.

'Yeah, Gaz, actually on three. Ready, everyone? One, two, three!'

With what looked like no effort whatsoever, Kate hefted the van over her head. At the same time, all of us pushed down hard with our wings, and the combined force lifted the van out of Kate's hands and into the air.

The weight was fine. We were all naturally strong to begin with, and if you add years (or in Dylan's case, months) of fighting and running to that, you're talking about some pretty heavy-duty bird kids. So actually holding the van wasn't really a problem. What did prove difficult was coordinating our movements so that we could move as a group in the right direction; a task easier thought than done. The thing is that when you put a bunch of kids with an average wingspan of about twelve feet close together in the air, people tend to get whapped over the head a lot if you're not careful. Which is why I'd told the others on the ground to stand back; I guessed it would be a pretty big downer if we all managed to jostle around so much that we lost grip of the van and flattened someone. So we made our slow, ungainly way over the rock pile, cries of 'watch it!' and 'that was my face, you moron!' ringing out as we went. After a close call involving Nudge almost getting her head whacked into the wing mirror, we managed to touchdown on the other side.

'Good job, guys,' I said, leaning against the van and patting the hood as we watched the grounded folk picking their way across the rocks. 'And great work, Kate!' I called to her. She jumped down from the nearest boulder, looking pleased.

'It was no problem.'

With that, the more aeronautically-challenged members of the group climbed back into the van, setting off along the road as the rest of us took to the air. Flying away from the rockslide, I glanced back for a moment; our first obstacle had been passed. I wondered what else we'd come up against on the road ahead.

Dramatic, huh? But yeah, we hadn't even reached the Oregon-California border yet. Still mucho fun to be had by all.

A/N Let me know what you think!