BRITT MAXICOM_

Shane Snowe, CEO of Britt Maxicom, was going through yet another pile of paperwork when his secretary hit the intercom.

"Sir, there is someone here to see you. She didn't give a name, she only said that it was important."

Snowe sighed before hitting the buzzer. "Send her in."

The door opened and a tall red-head entered the large office. "Ah, Bridget. What news do you have?"

The woman sighed. "Jeb's daughter returned. They were talking about some out-of-control experiment. Reaper, I think they called it," Bridget said, not giving him the whole truth. After all, she didn't want to betray her Fang, but she knew if the flock went down, he went down with them.

Snowe, however, paled. "Out of control? I thought it was on our side?"

"Negative, sir. It's on no one's side."

"What about this daughter? Is she a threat?" Snowe asked.

"She most definitely is," she said, not caring about betraying Max.

"Send the sentinels after her. We need to eliminate all threats," Snowe ordered. Bridget bowed her head and quickly left the room. Snowe turned back to his paperwork and other ways to control the puppet of a president.

MAX_

Do you ever feel like something is going to go wrong? It's not one of those 'Reaper-probably-is-going-to-show-up-and-do-something-phsycopathic-and-evil' feelings, more like 'evil-organizations-are-out-to-get-us-again' type feelings.

Keep on your guard. Something is going to happen.

Uh…a little detail please?

But as usual, the voice didn't respond. I opened my mind and used my 'flock telepathy'. 'Hey guys, I have a feeling-'

'That tonight's gonna be a good night!' Gazzy thought, and I ignored it.

'-that something's gonna happen. I just got a warning from the voice to be on our guard.'

'Sure thing, Max' Nudge thought.

'Gotcha' Iggy practically smirked. One day that boy is gonna get it!

Dylan smiled at me, and I hate to admit it, but he is kinda hot. 'Don't worry, Max. I'll protect you.' And THAT, my friends, is the reason I am not with Dylan.

Fang looked at me. 'What's wrong?'

'Dylan, the Flock, our whole situation…do you want to be a little more specific?'

'Why don't we grab something to eat? I'm pretty sure the others are getting hungry,' was his brilliant response.

I rolled my eyes. "YO FLOCK! LANDING TIME!" I yelled. It's pretty convenient we were flying over a city at that certain time, eh?

You know the drill: we landed silently, tucked in our wings so hard they felt like they were gonna snap off our backs, found a fast-food joint, ordered enough to clean them out for the next month and got people staring at us. Now wanna hear the thing that doesn't happen every time? They gassed the place, and before I was knocked out, I felt my hands being cuffed behind my back.

…

I woke up in a shmancy office that was so clean I felt that even one of my hairs touched anything, it would all be contaminated and the cleaners would have a fit.

"Maxine Batchelder…" said the tall guy behind a shmancy desk. I raised my eyebrow at him. Maxine Batchelder? He looked in his late thirties with ginger hair and dull grey eyes. "I'm Shane Snowe, CEO of Britt Maxicom-"

"And pretty much ruler of the world," I finished. He looked a little angry I interrupted him. I guess Mr-Ruler-guy wasn't a patient man.

"I hear you are the daughter of Jeb Batchelder, a scientist I used to work with," Mr Snowe said. I snorted.

"I've always hated politicians and 'world leaders', and now you've made me hate you even more. I have a thing against scientists."

Snowe looked thoughtful. "Would you perhaps consider joining our cause?" he asked. I snorted again.

"Gee, you really have forgotten about me, haven't you?" I asked. He raised his eyebrows.

"I can't say I've ever met you, a beautiful seventeen year old girl," Snowe said, obviously trying to go for flattery.

"Whatever. So what does Britt Maxicom do? Other than take over the world? Eliminate half the world's population?" I asked innocently.

He seemed mildly impressed. "Very perceptive, Miss Batchelder."

I smirked at his cluelessness. "Hardly. But I thought you would learn from Itex's mistake: there will always be someone who rebel and try and stop you." I replied scathingly.

"And that someone is? You? I can hardly see what one teenage girl could do to stop a whole company," he sneered.

I rolled my eyes. "What about my friends?"

"Petty humans can do nothing to stop us!" he screamed hysterically.

"And you're not a 'petty human'? Someone's head is getting a little big, isn't it?" I asked innocently.

"Stop! You have wasted too much of my time!" he screamed.

I glared at the idiot who was supposedly the ruler of the world. "You're the one who brought me here in the first place!"

His hand came up and was just about to hit me, but thanks to my super-fast reflexes, I ducked just in time. I tried twisting my hands out of what they were tied up in, but I hissed in pain when it cut into my wrists. I turned my head quickly and saw they used barbed wire. Damn, why didn't I feel it earlier?

"Security!" Mr-important-leader-guy yelled. Two big brainless-looking idiots came running in. "Take her to the cells!"

The security guards grabbed me roughly and pulled me up. Just as they were about to drag me out of the room, the window smashed and someone rolled in quickly. My heart soared, thinking it was one of the flock. It dropped quickly when I saw it was Reaper. She kicked the first guard on the knee-cap as hard as she could and I swear you could hear the crack all the way from Australia. His leg was bent way back the wrong way. The guard screamed out in pain and dropped to the floor.

She then got out her gun and shot the other guard at his shoulder joint, effectively taking him out. She then turned to me and my heart sank to my feet. I snarled at her but she didn't seem to notice. Instead, she reloaded her gun and shot it again.

I waited for the inevitable pain, but it never came. Instead, I realised she shot my hands free.

"Get out of here Maximum!" she told me, and I didn't need to be told twice. I shot one last look at Shane Snowe before jumping out the window Reaper came through and unfurling my wings. I used my flock telepathy to find the direction the flock was and set off towards them.

I only had one question running through my head the whole journey: what the hell just happened?

REAPER_

I know, I know. I'm supposed to be the bad guy, and therefore not save the good guy. But I can't help it! I have a saving people complex! Now before you completely go off your tree and call me insane, let me explain.

I'm not a sadistic killer who takes away people's families for absolutely no reason. I save them, and it's not in a twisted way either. I guess I should start in the beginning. My power is a curse. I can read auras. That basically means I can get all your basic info from a glance, and I'm not talking about addresses and phone numbers. Take the guy I just shot in the shoulder for example:

Dean Finnigan, thirty-two, IQ of 32 (below average), still lives with his mom, born on the twenty-eighth of March, death date is the twent-fifth of July, 2022- eleven years from now, from cancer that is already infecting his arm. Has the personality of a wet sock, needs to follow orders of some kind and is currently feeling pain and hatred, towards the person who shot his shoulder…Oh, right.

See? I can get all that in one glance. And people wonder why I don't like going out in public…

Before I could understand this power, little numbers used to appear above everyone's head, with the amount of days they had left, and I used to have to feel how they would die… yeah, most of the time it's painful, and that's why I'm now practically immune to pain.

Now I'll tell you the story of my little 'Flock'. Britts was the first person I killed, and it hurt me to do it. I realised the white-coats injected her with a virus, one that gave them a personal uplink to Britts. She was unknowingly their eyes and ears. But I didn't kill her because of that. I killed her because the virus would've eventually moved to her heart via her bloodstream, and the white-coats would torture her to death with it. Trust me, she would've died painfully. The stab in the neck was a luxury.

I killed the others for similar reasons. Farden (Britts' twin) was injected with the same virus. They gave the other's different types of cancers, to see if they could survive them. I don't think I have to say that they wouldn't. Remember the swine flu epidemic? Turns out the white-coats started that. That's all they injected me with, so all I got was a harmless cold.

Now…the time I spent with Britt Maxicom wasn't my own choice. The white-coats captured me and put an electric collar around my neck that would shock me until I did whatever they needed done. They didn't tell their precious boss that, so that's why he was so surprised when I came back under my own control just then, and I mean, like, five seconds before saving Max.

Faith was the help that hurt me the most. When I captured her, instead of handing her over to that sadist, Ter Borch, I spent time with her in my free time. She was the only one I told everything to, and the only one who knew I was being controlled. During the time spent with her, I started to realise that her DNA was unravelling. It was an unhealthy mix of bird, human, Max and Fang. She was literally falling to pieces. She was the one who suggested that I shoot her, to keep me safe. She was a smart three-year-old, one that I would never forget. I still have no idea how she kept it from the flock, and especially Fang, once the flock connection was finally established.

I know the flock will never forgive me. Yeah, it's the sad truth, but the truth nonetheless. I mean, I wouldn't forgive me either, even if I knew the reasons. I'll leave you wondering why I saved Max, I mean, I'm not just going to start gushing heart out to complete strangers.

I'll tell you eventually what Britt Maxicom has planned, but that would take too long, so you'll just have to see for yourself.

-Reaper"

I put down my pen and put my journal in my pack. Hopefully after I'm long gone, someone in the flock will find it and hopefully forgive me eventually in the eternity they have.

I stretched my arms and stood up. I retied my hair back into a scruffy ponytail and straightened my shirt. I opened the bat-like wings that so did not help with the 'Grim Reaper' image I'm trying to discourage.

It's time to find Jeb, and I hope I'm not too late.

Yeah! It's done! And it only took five months!

Dylan: yeah…not something to be proud of…

Me: whatever. Anywho, SOooooo so so so so so so so so so so so sooooooo sorry I haven't updated!

Dylan: quit grovelling *yawns*

Me: shut up! Anyway, I reread this and I decided I wanted to go in a completely different direction, so I revised this, changed a few subtle things and fixed up a few mistakes. Now it should be a little easier to read.

My next update will most definitely be quicker than my last, but until then folks!

R&R! (: