Chapter 20- Abandon all Hope, ye who enter here

The Great Gatsby was amazing but right now I hate Daisy more than anything and anyone- fictional or real-. I didn't know it was possible to hate someone this much but it turns out I can.

Anyways, I felt like writing another chapter because I felt like the last one was too short and I need to clear things up. Also, I have a pounding headache and I needed something other than watching Pat Pattison tell me that I don't have six best friends to occupy my time.

Enjoy.

Max (This is during the time of Fang's last POV)

Suddenly, they're all shouting my name. Fang rushes to me and then I see myself. My face is scrunched in pain, my hands over my ears. Fang's carrying me and I'm limp in his arms. There's muffled shouting and I look behind us to see a pack of large grey wolves chasing us. Then I'm being pulled away. I can feel it myself tethered to my physical body.

A black smoke rises next to me and the Queen appears. She's laughing. "Oh, darling Maximum Ride," she sneers, "Can't you see how hopeless your situation is?"

I look around and I see my friends running, but there was still a good distance between them and the wolves. I shrug at the Queen, "Not really."

She scowls and I'm suddenly reminded of Fang's scowl, "I'm the Queen and I'm NOT just going to let you destroy my Realm."

"Oh, sorry, we'd better back off now that we don't have your permission," I roll my eyes, "What have you got to do with this? Honestly, just stop wasting your energy because you KNOW that we're going to get out of here whether you like it or not."

I can feel her anger radiating off of her like a wave and suddenly, I'm choking.

Her lips don't move but I can feel her talking in my head. She's roaring, "MAXIMUM RIDE, I AM THE QUEEN OF THE REALM. SEE THOSE WOLVES? I SUMMONED THEM. I'M CONTROLLING THEM. YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO HOPE OF SURVIVAL."

There's a giant boom and the walls shudder, stone piling down between us. She shrieks in indignation and then I'm being pulled back into my body.

I don't see the red dots here. I search the ceiling confusedly. Then I manage to choke out, "She knows we're here and she's threatened."

"What?" They all ask in unison.

I sit up and cough a little, my throat a little raw from being choked even if it was spiritually, "She's been coming to me in my dreams. Just now I saw her. She sent the wolves after us."

They all look at me like I grew a second head. Fang finally speaks, "You mean my mother?"

I nod, rubbing my throat.

"WHAT?" they ask again.

"That's getting creepy," I tell them as I grab our stuff, "But I don't think she can reach us here. There aren't any red lights here and she doesn't seem to be able to get through the wall. She disappeared when you guys brought that down. Good job by the way. Gazzy, how long do we have to go?"

My little crew of misfits is just staring at me. I snap my fingers in their general direction, "Hello, can you not process? We have to get out of here. Gazzy, how much longer?"

Gazzy shakes his head and out of his daze (thank goodness) and replies, "About 300 feet or so."

"Great," I hook a bag over my shoulder, "Let's go."

After they realized we can't go back, my pack A/N That's what I'm going to start calling them decided to actually move.

It's eerily quiet in the last couple hundred feet of the last tunnel. There are no water sounds and no monsters coming at us. There isn't even that hum from the other parts of the cave. I feel a part of the walls. It doesn't even feel like stone. It almost feels like sponge. It's soft almost and gives when I put pressure on it.

"Um, Max?" Angel speaks up haltingly. I turn quickly to see what she was looking at. Mom quickly covered Angel's eyes.

I jog up next to them and the sight shocks me. There are skeletons. A small mountain of them. Some of them are animal, some are in the middle of shifting and some are all human.

"Are those- are those all from the wolves?" Iggy swallows hard.

"Probably, yeah," I reply, transfixed on the sight. Some stray bones are scattered by my feet and they look like they have bite marks on them. I snap out of it, "Right, that's a pleasant sight. Now let's go."

My pack murmured their agreement and turned away from the bones. How many people died here? How many people died thinking that they're going to reach salvation? What is on the other side of the tunnel anyways?

Fang

Anti-climatically, the tunnel ended with a set of doors. The doors were made out of stone and had the Itex symbol repeated for times in the middle of the two doors.

"Ready?" Max asks, looking at all of us.

"Ready," I say and she looks at me, a mixture of emotions too jumbled up for my tired brain to understand all bundled in that one look.

She pulls the doors open and there's a blinding light. Then, I hear something.

It's birdsong.

What?

The light fades and Max looks at the stone in her hand. "Guess I won't be needing this anymore," and she throws it to the ground. I follow suit.

After my eyes adjusted, it turns out it was still pretty dim. We were under a bridge with a paved road running through the bridge.

"Hey! Watch out, you freaks!" a human man whips by on top of a contraption.

Max and her big temper sticks her hand out and grabs onto a handle of the contraption and the human falls off, "Who are you calling a freak, human?" she shouts in indignation.

"Chill out, bitch," the man dusts himself off and spits.

"Don't call her a bitch," I snarl, picking him up by the collar.

"Don't get your panties in a knot. She's the one who ripped me off my bike!"

"Where are we?" Max commands.

"The moon. Where the hell do you think you are? We're in Central Park, New York City!"

I let him go and he gives us a dirty look before riding off on his ridiculous red machine or "bike" as he called it.

"Where the hell is Central Park, New York City?" Max muses.

And that wasn't even the biggest surprise today. We walked through "Central park" and almost got ran over by bikes, large yellow horse-less carriages with really rude people inside of them yelling profanity at us, and black platform like things with wheels at the bottom.

When we got out of Central Park, we saw buildings that reached into the clouds.

"What is this place?" Kate breathes at the same time Gazzy and Angel says, "We're hungry!"

Max

"Okay, let's get some food!" I say brightly and my tummy rumbles in agreement.

I followed my nose to a silver box with several pieces of meat on them. I smiled and reached for one.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing!" the human standing next to the box says.

"Summoning elephants with my magical powers. I'm eating, leave me alone."

"You have to pay for that. And you can't eat hot dogs alone. You need bread and ketchup and relish and mustard."

Hot dogs? What? That sounds repulsive. Well, if he's offering us that much food, it'd be rude to refuse. I reached for the bread and the "ketchup and relish and mustard" too. He goes to slap my hands away and I take his hand and twist his wrist, stepping back and he falls to the ground with a loud 'oof'. This skill was acquired by courtesy of Jeb- who in the process of teaching me this almost broke my wrist ten times-.

"Thief! Help!" the man shouts. I look down at him and shrug, taking the food.

It wasn't until then that I noticed people running towards us.

I look towards the pack, "Run!"

We ended up in an alley way and I passed around the "hot dogs". You don't have a clue how difficult it was to carry ten hot dogs, bread and "condiments" with me while running.

"This is amazing," Angel says, her eyes going back into her head a little from pleasure. The pack murmurs in agreement.

"It's called a "hot dog"," I explain, "Disgusting name, right?"

"Where are you guys from? I don't know anywhere that doesn't have hot dogs." I turn to see a figure in the alley with us. I stand on guard, almost dropping the hot dog. Fang tenses next to me.

The figure steps out from the shadows. He's tall, has brown hair and green eyes and a lean build. His lips curve into a smirk, "Hi, I'm Sam."