Max raced through the door and straight into the other room. It was dark, dingy, concrete, moldy, and containing little else than a metal table on which sat an arrangement of assorted objects… and Henry Terry himself.

"Hey. Henry Terry, right?" Max spoke, standing stiffly and staring straight at the man.

Fang had darted directly into the shadows after Max had made her grand entrance, and was now cautiously making his way towards the only other door in the room. The door was directly behind Terry, and ajar.

"What are you doing here? You shouldn't be here. This is just for my family. My son is in there… don't touch him…" Henry reached his arm out to the table in front of him and lifted a heavy knife in his meaty hand. He brandished it stiffly, but Max was way too prepared for him. With one swift movement, she launched herself over the table and kicked the weapon out of his hands, giving the man a couple swift kicks to the chest.

"Hey… Fang… how… much… should… I… hurt… him?" Max grunted, punctuating each word with a blow to the man's body.

Fang finally reached the door, having dashed for it as soon as Max began attacking Henry Terry. He flung it open and stared at the insides. The stench that wafted out was vile; blood mixed with filth mixed with decay mixed with rot mixed with human excrements. And inside was Iggy.

"Kill him."

Fang said this with a face stony and cold. Max faltered when she heard the frost in his words.

"Wh-what?"

"Kill him. Painfully."

That was all Fang uttered before he gently, softly closed the door behind him and was left alone in the room with his friend.

Iggy was a mess. His eyes were sunken and both were encircled with purple bruises. His nose looked like it may have been broken. His hair was tangled and really greasy, and a couple parts were stained with blood – most likely from the head wounds he received when he had been hit over the head with the bat. His entire torso was wrapped in bandages, and his arms were bound behind his back so that Fang couldn't see what damage had been done to them. Iggy's pants were stained with blood and other things; judging by the smell in the room, Henry Terry hadn't allowed Iggy a toilet. One of Iggy's shoes was on and looked relatively fine, while the other was gone and nowhere to be seen. In it's place were wrapped and bloody bandages.

But the worse was his mouth. Because his mouth had been cut, his cheeks slit, into… into what could be a gruesome smile. It reminded Fang in the sickest of ways of the Joker. Fang could see the metal wire that had been used as stitching; it was sloppy and sticking out at parts. Iggy's mouth was raw, red, and crusted with blood.

Iggy hadn't moved when Fang stepped into the room; it looked like he was drugged or something. So Fang stepped forward.

That's when he noticed something that seemed rather out of place. In the center of the room, about four feet in front of Iggy, was a chef platter with a metal lid.

Fang walked forward slowly and bent to remove the lid. And the second he did, the stench hit him. Of rotting flesh and decay. Flies swarmed from the contents to flit about Fang's head, and he looked at the meat that was on the platter.

It sickened him, and filled his whole being with dread and apprehension. Two hands, connected to their dismembered forearms. Each of them looked as if they had been removed days ago, and each had been partially eaten. One was missing all the fingers, the other chunks of flesh so that white – and quickly yellowing – bone showed through.

But what sickened Fang most was that the limbs were quickly recognizable as Iggy's.

Looking up, Fang wildly ran around behind where Iggy was bound to make sure it was true. And what met him was the gruesome sight of Iggy's arms ending just below the elbow, still bleeding, wrapped with bandages.

Frantically, Fang reached out and tried to remove the chains binding Iggy to the metal pole. Unfortunately, they had been locked. However, what was keeping his arms behind his back was a cord of rope, which Fang was easily able to untie and remove.

When Iggy's arms fell from behind his back to his sides, he was woken from his drugged sleep. His eyes snapped open, and he let out a small noise from the back of his throat.

"Iggy?" Fang asked hurriedly, moving back around in front of his friend and kneeling by his side. He was afraid to touch Iggy, though, lest he hurt him even more.

Iggy's blind eyes stared into Fang's for an uncounted length of time, and Fang stared back in fear and regret. And then he heard sirens.

Fang wouldn't leave Iggy's side even as the police cars and ambulance had stopped, what sounded like, outside the building.

"Iggy? Are you…" but he couldn't finish it. He couldn't ask 'are you okay' when it was so clear, so obvious that he wasn't.

"Fang," Max's voice suddenly came and the door opened behind him. "I found a key. Terry had it. The police are here, they have a stretcher. Is Iggy okay?"

But she took a couple steps forward and saw Iggy's rotting hands on the platter, and her breath hitched in her chest. She moved forward quickly to look at him.

"The keys are to unlock his chains. Do it," Fang said. Max silently moved around and inserted a silver key into the lock keeping Iggy bound tight, and the chains fell away. But Iggy remained where he was, simply staring in Fang's direction. He didn't even flinch, didn't move, didn't react. Just stared. And he couldn't even see.

"Iggy!" Max said. There was heard a gasp from the room behind them, and footsteps as people rushed to the unconscious body of Henry Terry. Then someone appeared in the doorway.

"Here!" a strong voice called, and Fang turned slightly to see a police-man waving over a couple of people bearing stretchers. They walked in, took in the stench, saw the severed arms, and noticed the horribly mutilated Iggy, and rushed forwards instantly. One of them spoke into their walkie-talkie about a bunch of medical mumbo-jumbo that should be ready in the ambulance.

The stretcher-bearers moved quickly, setting the stretcher down and moving Max and Fang aside. The two of them didn't struggle; they were too shocked to see Iggy in such a state.

But only when the men had begun to move Iggy did he finally react. His eyes widened and he shook his head, trying to stay where he was.

"No… no… NO! I can't run away! I can't! If I run away he's going to hurt me! Don't… I don't want to be hurt anymore… please…"

"Please do not resist, sir, this is for your own good. Sir, please, we are trying to help you…"

"NO! I'm happy here! Look, see? I'm smiling! I'm smiling, don't…" Then, quite suddenly, Iggy jerked his face to the side and stared at a point on the wall far away from anyone else. "What are you looking at? There's nothing to see! Stop looking at me! Shut up!"

"Sire, please refrain yourself…" But Iggy paid no heed to the men's advice, and so they had little alternative but to take out a little syringe and insert it into the flesh on Iggy's neck.

As the men slowly pushed the liquid into Iggy's system, the drugs began to relax him, and he quite calmly drifted into a sort of meditative state, not reacting when the two stretcher-bearers loaded him onto the stretcher and bound him tight so that he was unable to move.

"You are… family?" one of the men asked as Fang and Max followed behind them, their eyes trained on Iggy.

"Yes. He's our brother. Please, we have to stay with him!"

"Very well. Come into the ambulance. You can ride with him to the hospital. The drugs should wear off in a few minutes; he'll be able to talk then…"

But the unspoken knowledge was that Iggy… had indeed been changed. And that little bout of insanity in the concrete room had probably been just the tip of the gruesome iceberg.

Once inside the ambulance, doctors began to work right away, stripping Iggy of the soiled bandages and cleaning him.

So, right away, they noticed the wings.

The nurses stared at Iggy for quite a few long moments, until Fang brought them back to the present with a few well-chosen swear words and some threats to their family if 'they didn't get back to freaking helping him from freaking dying'.

So, naturally, after a small discussion on the matter, both Max and Fang had donated a few ounces of blood, and Iggy was now cleanly bandaged, had new tourniquets, and was stocked with plenty of fresh blood and plasma emptying into him through an IV.

And as they all careened down the road to a small hospital that was twenty minutes away, Iggy finally came to from the light drugs and said something.

"Where'd my family go?"

Fang and Max were instantly at his side. The nurses turned and looked at them for a second, then set back to working with all their medical equipment.

"What, Iggy? What was that?" Max asked softly, reaching out to brush his hair out of his sightless eyes, her fingers quivering as they passed above his mutilated mouth.

"I had one once. But I think I lost them. But I don't know where I had them last…"

Iggy trailed off, his voice sounding doubtful. He turned to Max.

"Do you know where I left them? My family was a good one. You can't just replace good ones. You can't buy them again. I shouldn't have lost them…"

Max's bottom lip quivered as she answered.

"You didn't lose them, silly. I'm right here. Me and Fang. We're right here. We're your family."

Iggy let out a despairing laugh, his voice cracking. The nurses had cleaned the blood from his face, but the sloppy stitching was still there, and when Iggy had talked, his wound began to bleed again.

"Don't be a stupid. My family was bigger than that… and… and… and they…"

But a second later, he had again reverted to staring at the ceiling at something he couldn't see and frowning. Max looked up, but nothing was there. Just spotless white.

"What's wrong?"

"Tell them to stop staring at me. Tell them there's nothing to look at. Tell them that." Iggy then reverted to talking directly to the imaginary thing. "You hear that? Stop staring at me! Stop staring! Shut UP!"

He began to struggle violently at his bonds, but Max and Fang went to hold them down, their hearts heavy. They knew their brother had been put through horrible torture. But they didn't want him to be so different. They wanted their Iggy back, whole and undamaged. But, staring at his drastically changed face and severed arms, that would never again be an option.

The ambulance arrived at the hospital in record time, and Max and Fang were sent to wait in a large room full of chairs, vending machines, and magazines to wait while Iggy was taken in to surgery.

"We should call mom," Max said quietly, staring at the door through which Iggy had been brought.

A moment later, her cell-phone was out, and the other line was ringing. It took only a few seconds before the phone was answered.

"Yes? Max? Max, what's happened?"

Max shook slightly with relief at the sound of her mother's voice, and Fang moved forward to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, looking into her eyes with his own frightened ones.

"Mom, it's me… we found Iggy, and Henry Terry, and I think Terry is in custody, and Iggy's here, at the hospital…" I quickly gave her the name of the town and the hospital we were at.

"Okay, you both stay right there. I'm driving over. We'll have Iggy moved back to town when he's in stable condition."

"Okay, mom," Max answered, her voice suddenly raspy as her tongue became dry, and she heard a soft click as her mother hung up. A beeping began to echo in her ears, so she hung up as well and put her cell-phone in her pocket.

It took Dr. Martinez two hours to drive down to the city. During that time, Fang and Max had each been asked to come in to donate a couple more ounces of mutant blood. Iggy had finally been properly patched up and was out of surgery, but his condition was not yet totally stable and Max and Fang hadn't been allowed to see him yet.

Valencia entered the hospital at four in the morning, her eyes shadowed with worry and lack of sleep, an anxious look on her face.

"Max!" she called the moment she saw her and Fang. "Fang!"

And Max ran forward to her mother, throwing her arms around her, burying her face in her chest and began to sob. Dr. Martinez tried to soothe her daughter, softly rubbing her back and murmuring words into her ear. And after a minute, Fang had stepped forward too, and, just as Max, wrapped his arms around the two women, buried his face in Valencia's shoulder, and began to cry as well.

So, of course, seeing both her daughter and the boy she had become to know as the master of emotional-constraint cry, Valencia Martinez had to cry as well.

And so they all stood there for an uncountable length of time and cried.

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

The morning saw each of them, asleep, sitting next to each other in the hard chairs of the waiting room, Fang's and Max's head each on one of Dr. Martinez's shoulder. A nurse then came forward and asked to speak to her, so Valencia stood, trying carefully not to wake either of her children, and followed her into a hall and a small office. A doctor there was waiting for her.

"Iggy Martinez is your son, correct?" the woman asked her.

"Yes. Un-biologically, yes," Valencia answered.

The doctor fished through some papers she had on her desk.

"And you have written here you would like to have him transported back to your hometown when he is stable?"

Dr. Martinez nodded, and the doctor nodded as well.

"Well, we are happy to inform you that your son is in stable medical condition. We are ready to transport him via ambulance whenever you desire. However, you and your other children will be unable to ride with us. You may follow behind in your car. This is fine by you?"

Dr. Martinez nodded furiously.

"Oh yes, thank you, doctor. I would like to leave as soon as possible."

"Then the ambulance will be ready in forty minutes. Feel free to get ready. We will depart at eight."

Valencia went back into the waiting room to shake her children awake.

"Whussat?" Fang muttered quietly, sitting straight and rubbing at his eyes. "Iggy?"

Max's eyelids fluttered, and she whispered a string of nonsensical words.

"The doctors are preparing an ambulance to transport Iggy back home. We'll be following in our car. Why don't you two get some food in those vending machines, and then we can wait a little?"

It turns out it wasn't much of a wait. Max and Fang bought practically one of each item in that machine, and it took them all of thirty minutes to finish chowing. Finally, a receptionist informed them that the ambulance was prepped, and would be departing shortly.

And so they were on the road ten minutes later, trailing behind the ambulance carrying their Iggy. Max and Fang remained attentive at all times, watching the road for any signs of anything; Erasers, other mutants, evil scientists, etcetera. But nothing terrible jumped out in all of the two hours it took to ride back.

"Max, Fang, you two fly back up to the house. Tell Ella and Nudge and the rest that Iggy is… alright. Stay up there. I will call you as soon as they allow visitors. Okay?"

"Okay," Max answered, because both of them were too tired to defy her mother's orders.

So they found a secluded area and took off into the sky, soaring directly to their house, and landing in the front yard.

Almost immediately each of the kids rushed out with worried looks on their faces.

"Max! Fang! Is Iggy okay? He's going to be okay, right?"

"Yeah! Nothing bad happened to him, right?"

"He's going to be okay?"

"You found him! I'm so happy! Is he fine?"

Max and Fang stared at each of the eager faces. Ella and Nudge seemed nervous and eager at the same time, like it was all some sort of exciting adventure and everything was alright now that the 'prince' was rescued. Total looked like he was just numbly awaiting the decree. Gazzy seemed scared, and Angel looked beyond sad; she had already read their memories, and knew of the damage.

And Max was silent. For once, it was Fang who spoke, and he couldn't bare the looks on their faces, and so decided to be blunt.

"Iggy looks like the Joker, he has cuts everywhere, his foot was stabbed, his hands were cut off and he was forced to eat them, and he's gone insane. Happy?"

Then he stalked off into the house and up to his room. Max followed after a pause. And the two of them left the little kids out there to stand in shocked silence, and then begin to sob harshly.