FOUR

I wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball on the bed and fall into a blissfully apathetic coma. Unfortunately, anything and everything else in the entire universe was outweighed by the fact that I'd just spent three hours flying and crying and panicking, meaning one thing.

I was starving.

The rest of the flock hadn't moved: they were scattered around the living room when Fang and I came down the stairs. They caught a glimpse of my tear-stained, puffy-eyed face and flashed me a varying looks of frustration, impatience, and concern that I tried my best to ignore.

I truly wanted nothing less than to talk to them about any of this. Some irrational, immature part of me believed that if I said nothing, this would all go away. Unfortunately, I'd lived through one too many plot twists not to know that there was no escaping it.

"Nice weather we're having, huh?" I rasped, because I apparently had come totally unhinged and somehow thought this was even a remotely acceptable thing to say.

Iggy was the only one not facing at me. He had his back turned and was folding laundry. I wasn't surprised. His best coping mechanism was working with his hands. He snickered bitterly at my lame attempt to diffuse the ticking time bomb that was the air of the room.

"Good one, Max!" He tossed a pair of folded socks with uncanny accuracy and unnecessary velocity into the basket to his right. "So good that it almost made us forget that you disappeared into twenty-degree weather for three hours, leaving us all to wonder if you were ever planning on coming back!"

I looked down at the floor, ashamed. He was right. Historically speaking, when I've high-tailed it out of somewhere, it's been to go be self-destructive by my lonesome. I thought of Fang's mantra: Don't do anything stupid. I put myself in Iggy's shoes and couldn't even argue with him. I'd be pissed at me, too.

I was pissed at me.

Fang, who'd apparently finished processing his own fury with me and was now ready to defend my honor, growled curtly. "Iggy."

"No, it's alright. Iggy's right. I'm sorry. This is just… a lot," I said, ignoring what an exponential understatement this was. "I can't believe it."

"Yeah, well, none of us can," Iggy snapped. I winced at his harsh tone.

"I wasn't going to do anything." As in, like, I wasn't running off to slit my wrists at a beach. Or, you know, I wasn't gonna curl up and wait to die all alone without saying goodbye to anyone. "I just had to… think." And begin to emotionally unravel at the seams.

Iggy chuckled darkly for the nth time, this time as if to say, Sure. Fang uttered another sound of warning that was completely wasted on Iggy.

How much of a loser was I to have my family genuinely worried that I might take off forever in response to stress? I thought back to the first few months post-Vector and how much I'd struggled with my own demons. I'd pushed it all down initially to help Angel deal with her own, but when the dam had broken, it had nearly taken everyone down with it. The stress of keeping the flock functional and alive since the day of Jeb's departure had finally crashed over me like a devastating tsunami. Fang and Iggy had completely taken over flock operations, Iggy pulling two jobs to keep food on the table so Fang could manage the task of doing astronomical amounts of damage control with me.

It had only lasted a few weeks, but the aftershocks were still lingered. I thought of the bedside table laden with sleep aids, of the medicine cabinet full of supplements—HTP, L-theanine, Valerian root, GABA—all rumored to relieve stress, to promote mental health. Or so Nudge had told me. She'd done all this research into coping into methods to ward off the inevitable PTSD all of us would battle. It had taken me a while to realize that it hadn't been for all of us. It had been for me.

I surveyed each of their faces, looked deep into the eyes I'd known my entire life, and it became abundantly clear: they thought I was fragile, even to this day. And who was to say they were wrong? I certainly felt fragile; I ran on coffee and misplaced adrenaline alone. I spent my life asphyxiated by guilt and regret and suppressed memories. I was totally unlike the leader I'd been years before.

The weight of this awakening was too much for me to manage. I said it regularly, but when it came out of my mouth this time, it was different.

"I really feels like this all my fault."

Fang placed one hand at the small of my back. I leaned back into him. Iggy sensed the change in my demeanor and wilted a bit at my words. He put his hands to his temples and rubbed them, dropping the shirt he'd been folding but still not turning to face me.

"It's not, Max," he said, sounding exhausted. "It's not."

He was tired. Fang was tired. They were all tired of picking up my pieces.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. He sighed and shook his head, looking like he wanted to speak but deciding against it.

Nudge was sitting on the floor and looking up at me with fire in her eyes. She wasn't happy with me either.

"It's not your fault. It's Jeb's fault. And Anne's, and Silas Scythe's, and everyone else who ever did any of that crap to us. You didn't decide to be an experiment. None of us did."

"Since I'm apparently the only moron in the room, can someone tell me what exactly is going on?" Gazzy asked timidly. "I mean—yeah, you're in the newspaper. But, like… why?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I have no idea how the government got their hands on that picture, why it's all happening now, or why they care."

"Well, we know why they care," Angel said. "We're recombinant life forms. They know who we are. They've always been looking for us—but somehow now they know we're tied to the whole Vector thing."

It was a short speech, but it was met with a heavy silence.

Iggy's focus was no longer on the laundry. He turned, crossed his arms over his chest, and said flatly, "So we're fucked."

I cringed at his language but understood that this was decidedly notthe time to discuss etiquette.

"No," I said carefully.

The Gasman groaned. "She hesitated. That means we're totally f—"

"No," I said again, more firmly. "We are not. We're just…" I searched for something between downright lying and utter transparency and settled on, "…in a tight spot again."

Nudge, who was apparently angrier with me than she'd initially let on, saw right through my bullshit. "'Tight spot?' That's what you're going with? 'Tight spot?'"

"Nudge—"

"We're not little kids anymore. You don't have to lie to protect us. You know, like you did when you thought you were gonna die."

I cringed in response to this overt reference. It was a low blow they pulled out only during the dirtiest of arguments.

"I am so sick of this," Nudge continued. "I thought we were done. I thought this was over."

"We all did," Fang chimed in, untangling himself from me. I was grateful he'd finally decided to, you know, back me the hell up. "This sucks."

Iggy barked out a bitter laugh. "You don't think that's kind of an understatement?"

Fang's face darkened. "Think you could dial back the cynicism a couple of notches?"

"Golly gee, why sure, Fang. Because we all know the power of positive thinking has gotten us so far before."

"Stop! Enough." I waved my hands. "Please. We can't fight. I can't handle that right now."

"Well, better start handling it, sweetheart," Iggy said tartly.

"Iggy—" Fang started lethally, but I cut him off.

"I get it. I fucked up and you're pissed. But I did it, and I can't undo it, and I said I'm sorry, so can we please just move the hell on?" I snapped, earning surprised glances from the rest of the flock. Iggy looked a little embarrassed and said nothing more.

I felt totally out of gas and emotionally spent, and Nudge was right. Gone were the days that I had to lie to them to protect them. So I did something crazy: I told the truth.

"What do you want me to say? This is the reality of it. I hate it. I hate it so much. I want nothing more than to curl up in bed for the rest of eternity until all of this goes away. But it won't go away. If I could fix this by myself and keep you all out of it, I would. You know I would. But none of us are safe if the FBI is looking for us."

This announcement was met with silence. Nudge crossed her arms over her chest but softened a bit. Gazzy sighed and dumped his head into his hands. Iggy, who had abandoned the laundry and collapsed in an armchair, tilted his head back and closed his sightless eyes. Angel, who was perched on the armrest, said nothing.

"As of right now, the house is safe. If they haven't come yet, then they don't know it exists. So we have that going for us," I said lamely.

"Awesome," Iggy intoned. "Wow."

"We can complain all we want, but we don't have a choice," Fang said. His voice was firm, no-nonsense, and cold. "It is what it is."

Nobody said anything. I was in absolutely no condition to discuss plans and next moves and nobody asked. It was clear they weren't happy with me. For the time being, there was nothing more to say.

I turned and retreated into the kitchen, pulling open a cabinet in search of absolutely anything edible. I felt disconnected from reality and completely incapable of operating any sort of appliance. My eyes landed on a box of pasta. Even this seemed like a monumental task.

A pale, skinny arm reached up from behind me and pulled the box down. I turned and saw Iggy reach for another box and move with precision toward the stove.

In the same moment, Nudge came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing her cheek against my back and breathing deeply.

"I love you," she said simply. She sounded like she wanted to say more but left it there.

"You more," I said back, swallowing my guilt. "You too, Ig. I'm sorry."

His jaw was tight as he filled our largest pot with water.

"Don't take off like that again."

"I won't."

A loud popping sound filled the kitchen then; Iggy and I ducked for cover. I was on red alert in an instant. My eyes raked the kitchen for the source of the threat and inventoried flock members for injuries until my eyes fell on who else but Fang.

He was holding a smoking, sputtering bottle of champagne, looking at me a sheepishly. Angel retrieved a dish towel to mop up the spill on the floor, giggling as she did. Nudge reached into our highest cabinet to pull out six mismatching mugs and glasses to drink from. Gazzy pumped a fist in the air.

"Was saving this for your birthday, but, hey," Fang said with a shrug. "If we're gonna run for our lives again, might as well celebrate a little first, right?"

I stared at the ceiling for hours that night, which meant Fang did, too. He pretended to sleep to give me some privacy, but he couldn't fake the even rise and fall of his breath that took over when he was truly out.

My brain was buzzing from the bubbly and chewing over the conversation we'd had earlier. The pros of the situation were:

1. Fang was right. The FBI, to my knowledge, had no way of connecting our Real People Names to our Flock Names. If they did, they would've banged down our door before putting my photo in the paper.

2. The address on our licenses was an abandoned home full of squatters in Tuscon. Since they were legitimate IDs (despite having been produced under Angel's influence), it had never mattered; if they came looking for us, they wouldn't be able to find the house.

3. There were no genetically modified supersoldiers working for the FBI (as far as we knew), making them quite fragile and easy to overpower.

4. I (allegedly) looked markedly different than the photo from three years prior.

The cons of the situation were:

1. We were once again being searched for by people who could totally ruin our lives in a myriad of ways.

2. We could no longer feel safe.

3. We had a monumental problem to solve with no way to solve it.

The overarching questions:

- Had the FBI been behind Vector all along? Were they technically the "good guys?" Why were they coming for us now, three years later? Would any of us survive another anxiety-provoking, soul-damaging fight for our livelihood?

The Maximum Ride/Mackenzie Smith connection was what had my brain in a twist. I was trying to find some sort of way that they could tie the two of us together, but the only thing I could come up with was the photo of me (plus the Martinezes, which was a moot point). The FBI knew me as Maximum Ride from our time with Anne, but the rest of the world knew me as Mackenzie Smith. All the two of us had in common, from the perspective of the government, was sun-streaked blonde hair, brown eyes, and the most muscular back in the Western Hemisphere. Plus a group of mismatched "siblings," three of whom I had guardianship over.

The bigger picture was much harder to discern. Obviously, people (read: the government) knew about us, although who specifically and in what capacity was still a mystery. We'd always had our suspicions that the feds had had some intel regarding a secret lab responsible for the testing of recombinant lifeforms—living with Jeb had made that clear to us. Of course, our little stunt at the Italian restaurant in New York City had put us on the map, too; it was difficult sometimes to remember that it even happened, considering how little it had affected our lives in the long run. It was scary to think that the reports of us had died out so quickly. I guess New Yorkers didn't have much credibility when it came to the unusual. I guess unusual was pretty standard in the Big Apple, though.

Then again, I didn't pretend to know the inner machinations of the executive branch. Maybe they'd all been kept quiet somehow.

Our time at Anne's is what really tripped me up. Our country's government is obviously a large, (debatably) well-oiled machine; the net the interlocking branches wove was way beyond my understanding. There was no way everybody knew about us, and I knew enough about politics to know that it was pretty easy to keep whoever you wanted quiet, depending on the amount of power you had. It begged the question: had Anne's arm of the FBI been sworn to secrecy regarding our existence? Did Vector have an insider? Did Vector still have an insider?

Next to me, Fang was on his side, facing me. Giving up his sleeping façade, he moved an inch or so in my direction; the warmth of his body lapped at me like a flame, tempting and intoxicating. This tiny adjustment would typically wipe my mind clean of any stressors, leaving me yearning for his hands, his body, his safeness. But tonight, we were under different circumstances. Tonight, we were back to being hunted.

He knew this and sighed softly into the crook of my elbow, planting a kiss there. He traced a fingertip over my hipbone before reaching up and tapping my temple gently.

"What's going on up here?" he said.

"I don't even know anymore," I admitted. "I just want to…"

Fang left the pause open, but I had nothing to fill it with, so he said, "Find an island and drop off the screen?"

I looked down at him. His face was passive, but his eyes were mischievous. I tried and failed to stifle my smile.

"Yeah. Weave clothes out of plant fibers. The whole nine."

"Maybe we could make it work."

"Make what work? Living off the land Survivor -style?"

"No," Fang said. His hand was back on my hipbone. "Not running. Staying here, keeping a low profile."

"For what, the rest of eternity? That won't work and you know it."

"It's not impossible," Fang said.

"So we'll do what? Collect welfare? Homeschool the kids? Throw away Nudge's prom ticket and deflate the Gasman's soccer balls?" Fang opened his mouth to say something back, but I held my hand up, silencing him. "I know that's not what you want. You've never wanted that. You want this," I said, gesturing to the room around me, the house, our lives. "Normalcy. A life."

Fang shrugged, looking unperturbed. "I want you. I want us. I want them." He gestured too, only toward the door. "I don't need normalcy. At least not now. We have money saved. Valencia can help us. We can hunker down, wait for this all to blow over. Then start again."

My mind seemed to remember this argument like it was yesterday. Fang's constant desire to just stop, to live for ourselves, and my insistence on finishing—what, exactly? Running through the maze they'd woven for us? Trying to fulfill some grandiose, nonspecific "mission?"

It's different now, I told myself. I wasn't jumping through Jeb's hoops or trying to take down a conglomerate. I was genuinely doing this for them. For me.

"What happens when it doesn't?" My speech was getting more pressured and hysterical, but instead of sounding anxious, it sounded angry. "When we go back to work or start new lives or whatever we do? Angel can't mind control anymore, so we can't get different identities. We can't just make the FBI forget that they're looking for me. What happens when someone recognizes me and they hunt us down?"

"What exactly are we going to do, then, Max?" Fang said, matching my change of tone. "So we leave, go running. Where are we running to? How are we going to fix this? We can't exactly blow up fucking Quantico."

"I don't know, Fang!" I was whisper-yelling now. "That's what I'm trying to figure out! But we sure as hell can't just hunker down and wait this out. Maybe you don't need normalcy, but they do. They deserve it. And so do you."

Fang withdrew his hand and rubbed his forehead. "I hate this," he admitted finally.

"I know."

He'd made a valid point and voiced what I had been trying not to admit to myself: I had no plan. But I was certain of one thing: no matter where we went, there were people out there that knew there was a pack of mutant birdkids running around. And if they recognized any one of us, we were toast.

I sat upright in the bed when it hit me—a simple way to even minutely improve our chances at remaining anonymous once we departed on whatever hellish journey surely awaited us.

"What's wrong?" Fang said tersely next to me, levering up on one arm.

"Makeovers," I breathed defeatedly.

"What?" Fang stared at me with alarm. "Don't even tell me you're drunk. It was one glass of champagne."

"No," I said irritably. "Fang—we need makeovers."

A/N: Ask and you shall receive! Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed last chapter. Please keep it up; it's really, really nice to get feedback, and it really helps encourage me to write. I've been working crazy hours as you can imagine so I'm slowly losing the cushion I have on this story—every review I get is legitimately like a serotonin hit that makes me eager to crank out more content.

I'm thinking I may update in chunks for this story—this is part one, I think there may be a total of four or five parts to this. I'm trying to update once a week, and then maybe will take a longer break between "parts." We've still got a couple more chapters to go with this one.