Chapter five
He led me back to the room I had been in earlier. I sat silently on the bed and he came to rest beside me.
"Who was she?" I asked myself out loud.
"Who?" Fang asked me.
"Max. I don't know her. I can sense her there, but she's frozen. I know you are, and Angel and the Flock but not myself. Who am I?"
"You're still Maximum Ride. You are still the one who loves leading us, and kicking Flyboy ass, and cute shoes." He grinned at the last part. I attempted a smile too but it came out as a twisted grimace.
"Why didn't you come for me?" I asked in a small voice that was overflowing with sadness.
"We tried Max, we really did" his voice was pleading, agonized. "We were in a comatose state from the fall for about four months. After our legs had healed enough we took the ground searching for you. And finally when the strength in our wings had been regained, we took the air. We searched the entire globe, but every lead we found was a dead end. Until now, of course. We fell near Lake Erie, you remember?" I nodded. "Do you know where you are at right now?"
"No."
"Max, we are about 50 miles away from the Great Wall."
"In China?"
"I believe that would be the only Great Wall. Do you remember when we were captured by that weird Gorgon thing and the UD told us that China wanted to use us as a super weapon?" I nodded again. "Well they went after us again in the attempt to use you as weapon. But when we 'died' and you remained unresponsive, they got angry. And they began testing on you and recreating others like us."
"You mean like Max II?" I sighed.
"No, more like Max 2.0."
I glanced up at him. He wore an anxious expression.
"What do you mean?"
"They have combined our abilities—all of them—and graphed them into a human with avian and some sort of feline DNA."
"Did you get a good look at her?"
"No. And Max, it's a him."
"Well that'll make it all the more fun to kick his ass" I said, regaining some of Max's attributes. "There's just one thing."
"What?"
"Well, two things."
"Okay tell me."
"I forgot how to fight."
"You forgot how to FIGHT?! Max, how can you forget something as important as fighting?!"
"Well, thinking you were dead I didn't feel that I was going to need something like that anymore, and I haven't moved in two years, so how was I supposed to keep my skills sharp?"
"I dunno, beat the guards around a bit?"
"I didn't have the will to" I said looking down again. I heard him sigh.
"Alright, what's the second thing?" he asked. I was afraid to answer because I knew he was not going to like it. I shook my head.
"What is it Max?"
"I forgot how to fly."