Fang shivered as a draft of cold air washed over him. The cage was tiny, uncomfortable, designed for a tiny lab rat rather than a fourteen year old boy with wings. The room was quiet, the silence broken only by the sound of something crying.
There was something dead in the cage next to him. It was smelling, making the smell of antiseptic more pronounced. Every now and then a whitecoat would come in to check up on him, or to drag another experiment out of the room, but mostly everything was still. No one had come for him yet. Max will come, Fang thought miserably to himself, tracing the mesh of the cage, but she must come soon.
"Is this the subject?" a crisp voice said, ringing out in the gloom. Fang winced, knowing instinctively that they were talking about him.
"Yes," came another voice, smooth and firm, yet wary at the same time. Fang looked up in surprise.
It was Jeb.
Jeb walked over to his cage and crouched down so that he was looking Fang straight in the eyes. He smiled slightly, as if proud that a fourteen year old was trapped in a tiny crate with no way of escape.
"Hello, Fang," he said fondly, as if he was an old man talking to his favoured grandson rather than a scientist talking to his helpless captive. Fang just looked at him, glaring with his dark, cold eyes. Jeb took from his pocket a long, thin metal chain. Fang was dragged roughly from his cage and Jeb, looking regretful;, wound the cord tightly round Fang's wrists as the boy struggled.
"This will subdue him?" the whitecoat asked doubtfully. Jeb nodded, and pulled out another chain from his pocket. He clipped it to the cord that was wrapped around Fang's wrists. He pulled on the lead, causing Fang to stumble forward. The whitecoat laughed, and grabbed the lead from Jeb. He started to drag Fang out of the room, and Fang, exhausted and weak, could do nothing but follow.
We stopped in the back of a garage station. There were black bin bags everywhere, huge ones, which effectively masked us from people's eyes. Angel had snuggled up to Iggy, moving towards warmth. Nudge had made a blanket out of bin liners. Gazzy had grabbed one, much to Nudge's annoyance, and crushed it into a ball, making a pillow. Hey, it's not like we carried silken sheets around with us. We had to improvise! I was on watch.
It's a horrible feeling, counting people and knowing there's one too few. That jolting feeling, realising that one's missing all of a sudden, and yet knowing that they were never there in the first place.
I was dozing, thinking deeply about Fang, so I didn't hear a creaking sound that came up behind me. However, Nudge did.
"Max!" I spun round to see a grinning eraser standing over me. I lashed out, catching him by surprise. Blood gushed out of his nose, into his mouth.
"What do you want?" I hissed at him, as I dodged a punch. He smirked ghoulishly, and pressed a little red button attached to his side.
A large cloud of dust appeared. I coughed, choking, as it billowed around me. When it had cleared, the eraser had gone. A small white piece of paper fluttered to the ground. Angel leant down and picked it up. She squeaked in surprise and passed it to me. I gasped.
It was a picture. A black and white photograph. It was painfully obvious what the picture was of.
It was a picture of a room. A bright white room, with many cages stacked in it. Three cages in particular were focused on. In the left cage was a little boy with flower sticking out of the top of his head. It looked like a pink rose. The thorns were digging into his skin. Large droplets of blood looked like they were trickling down his face. He was crying.
In the right cage was what looked like a dead dog-cat thing. It was brown and orange, and it had three tails. It looked utterly pathetic, miserable and sad. But it was what was in the middle cage that scared me most.
It was Fang. A pair of dark eyes gazing with such total fear out the mesh of an iron cage. You could barely make out his features, but from what I could see, he was bleeding badly. Long, jagged, open scars were raked along his face.
I passed it over to Gazzy. He took it gingerly, as if scared it would bite him. It didn't. Instead, it did something much, much worse.
The picture moved. I could see a man in a whitecoat move into the chain of vision, I could see someone crouch down and look at Fang, but then Gazzy dropped it.
"Max?" he asked, sounding terrified.
"Pick it up, Gazzy," I said firmly, "and don't let it go." We all crowded round the photo to see what would happen next. Gazzy picked it up slowly, and held it up so everyone could see.
Fang was dragged from his cage. He seemed to have trouble standing up. My heart constricted at the sight of him. Then the man who had been crouching stood up and turned around and I gasped.
It was Jeb.
"That dirty, rotten-," Nudge began to shriek, but I shot her a look. We turned back to the picture. It was empty, and Fang and the two men had gone. The little flower boy was still crying.
Gazzy let the picture slip out of his fingers and it floated down to the ground, seemingly innocent. Gazzy turned to us and gave a little half smile.
"Well," he said, as if asking for our approval, "I've got a new power."
Hi everyone! So here's Chapter two! Right, so, I am going to add a new feature to this story. It is the question and answer feature. You ask any questions, point out any plot holes, or just tell me something interesting about Maximum Ride, and your name, question and answer will go here!
Kirena45 and mimim1010 ask:
Where is this picking up from?
It's from the beach scene in The Angel Experiment, where Fang fights Ari.
Special Thanks to the following people for reviewing:
Kirena45
Lizziekaerocks77
Mimim1010
Yuki's Little Girl
Apologies if any user names are spelt incorrectly.
Maximum Ride © James Patterson. I do not own it.