Nothing is ever as easy as one might hope. Just so you know, this chapter ends with a cliffhanger—the good kind. I was planning this cliffhanger from the very beginning of this story. I'm telling you this partly so you know that I got the idea all on my own with no influence from any of you, and partly to torture you as you read from the beginning of the chapter. Please do that, by the way. For your sake. Skipping ahead to the end kills the experience.

Chapter 4

Angel, Gazzy and I jacked a couple of uniforms from one of the closets in Jewel's base. Highly clichéd maneuver, I know, but it worked. We knew it wouldn't last the entire way, but the more of Jewel's soldiers we slipped by, the fewer we'd have to fight once our cover was blown.

The place was populated with more of the drones that Jewel had kidnapped us with. There were so many of them! Considering Jewel had only been an independent organization for a couple of days, the amount of help he had was horrifying. Looking out windows, there must have been ten thousand guys out on the lawn alone. All of them were decked out in armor—black and white, covering nearly the entire body, but with enough transparent armor around the eyes to give good visibility.

I hadn't seen any of them in action, but I took Jewel's word for it that they were perfectly capable of defeating us. Every last one of them having taken intense fighting, shooting, and defense training in seconds via encoded imagery.

Jewel's base resembled a research facility, or perhaps a hospital. Everything clean and shiny—which, of course, made us edgy. Childhood trauma. No matter how much freedom and triumph we experienced, memories of the School would never fade. At least no one had ever raped any of us. I call that an act of God—somebody somewhere wanted us to be spared at least one kind of evil.

Anyway, back to the present—the good news was, there were definitely too many of them going about too many tasks for us to stand out from the crowd. There was no way for all of them to know each other by sight.

But still… as we got progressively closer to the exit, it was pretty clear that somehow we'd get called out. There was no clear-cut path out; we had to go up and down to every floor of the building several times. At some point, two other guards blocked our paths, one man and one woman.

"Hey, brother," the man said. "I noticed you… didn't exactly know your way around the place." He eyed Gazzy and Angel. "Aren't the two of you a bit short to be Stormtroopers?"

I chuckled. "Cute. No, not to worry. We know what we're up to."

"And we may be small, but we're also quick," Gazzy added. Needless to say, he disguised his voice when saying that. He'd used a different voice every time we had to encounter more guards. At the moment, he sounded like a deep-fried down-home country politician. I made a mental note to tell him to tone it down before the next encounter.

"I see," the man said. "Okay, we're going to have to take you aside for a moment. Do you mind?"

"Yeah, actually," I said. "We've got things to do."

"You've got what to do?" the guy challenged.

"Mind your own business," I said. I am probably the best bluffer in the world, but the fact that I knew nothing about the inner workings of Jewel's organization would probably get this conversation derailed sooner or later.

"We're lieutenants," he said. "You guys, in the meantime, are whips. That means we outrank you. Your business is our business, and the fact that I have to tell you this only adds to my suspicion that you don't really know what you're doing. Come with us, all three of you."

He guided us to a small room. The two of them had us stand against the wall, and they stared at us through their transparent visors. The man had tan skin and brown eyes, and the woman was very pale, her eyes vividly green.

"I take it the three of you took the Instant Combat Training?" the guy finally asked.

"Yes," I said. "Hasn't everyone?"

"Yes, everyone has," the man said. "Good bluff, but isn't it pretty obvious that I'll have to make you prove that you can perform the combat?"

He held out five darts. "See these?" he said. "Five darts. Fly, cockroach, earwig, spider, mosquito." With each of those five names, he tossed one of the darts in a different direction. I looked around inconspicuously. Each of the five darts was embedded into a wall, impaled straight through the center of the bug that had been named with the throw.

"Every one of Jewel's soldiers can aim like that," he continued. "Can you?" He passed me a few darts. "You see the pencil laying across the desk?" he said. "Knock it off of the desk using the tip of a dart. Just so I know you're not an impostor, okay, brother?"

I saw the pencil. My instincts told me how to throw the dart. But there was no possible way that I could throw a dart and hit the pencil in one try—and if I failed on my first try, I'd be exposed. So, I hefted a dart in each hand and shot them into the two lieutenants' faces.

The male lieutenant caught the darts before they made contact. "Oh, thought you could hit me and take off?" he said. "Well, clearly you have no clue at all what kind of power Jewel's soldiers wield, do you? More proof that you're a traitor."

Angel giggled suddenly. She knew something I didn't. Something was up—and I thought that perhaps I knew what it was.

"Wait a second," I said. "Why hasn't she said or done anything?" I eyed the woman. "You're the only one who's been doing all those tricks with the darts. You know what I think? I think you're exaggerating the powers of Jewel's soldiers to try to get me to break down. You're no ordinary drone."

The man's eyes sparkled as he smiled. "Oh, you're pretty clever, brother."

"I'm not your brother," I said. "Quit calling me that, man."

"Really?" he said. "I can't call you 'brother'? I'm hurt, Fang. Fang, Maximum Ride's second-in-command, her boyfriend, and most recently her baby-daddy."

"What?!" I demanded. I stared into his eyes. An unattractive muddy brown, exotically shaped. There was nothing familiar about them at all. Of course, my eyes were familiar to most people across the world now, so it was perfectly reasonable to guess that we had never met. Then again, the guy's refusal to make eye contact with me stirred some part of me or another…

"You were exactly right, Fang," he said. "Jewel's soldiers can't do this, just me, baby, me. I wondered when you would figure it out! I knew it was you the instant I heard your footsteps, but hey, you were never the observant one. You were the brooding, quiet one. The sexy, sensitive one. The one who stayed under the water a bit too long at the age of ten."

"Who are you?" I snapped.

"Guess," he said.

"I… I couldn't possibly."

"Ah, sure you could. Come on, guess."

I grabbed him by the throat—I found that in sheer frustration, my strength actually cracked the armor on his neck, the shards digging into him.

"Tell me who you are or I'll kill you," I said in a grating whisper.

"All right, all right. Jeez. Calm down. Just let go of my throat, okay?"

I released him, holding him tightly under my glare. He pressed a button on the side of his helmet. His coloration changed dramatically—his eyes were now light blue, his skin extremely pale.

"I thought you could guess," he said apologetically. "I should have realized, though—nobody knows me as well as I know them."

He removed his helmet and shook out his spiky blonde hair. I gaped, staring in disbelief for a few moments. Hearing me stammer, he smirked, apparently pleased at finally being recognized. And with his disguise removed, of course I recognized him.

"Iggy?" I breathed.

"Sup?" he said smugly.