Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure (5 page)

I shook my head. “I don’t know why.”

“You know, Max,” he said after a few more minutes. We’d slowly turned in a huge circle and begun to head toward home.

I looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“You know I love you.”

I almost dropped right out of the sky. I literally forgot to flap my wings for a couple of seconds, and plummeted about fifteen feet before they started working on their own.

“I know you were
programmed
to love me,” I said cautiously, rising back level with Dylan.

“Maybe I was,” he said. “I don’t know. I just know I do. And I know that love has to go both ways. You might not love me now, but I hope you will, in time. I can wait. I’m not going anywhere.”

I said nothing, and we flew together wordlessly, higher and higher, as if we could touch the sky.

12

THERE WERE NO days. There were no nights. There were tubes and bright lights and indistinct voices. And pain. Always, always pain.

When Angel was finally put into a kennel, she whimpered with relief. This had to be better than the crisp white sheets, the stretcher that meant scalpels and masks and gloved hands always reaching for her. She shuddered violently, thinking of those hands, and shrank into herself. She never wanted to be touched again.

The kennel was meant for a large dog, but Angel still couldn’t stand upright in it. She felt around in the cage, her hands brushing against the cool metal of the bars. She searched for a water bottle; her throat was sore from the feeding tube. She winced as she shifted her small body in
the cramped space. She was covered with bruises, and her healing wounds stung.

Angel could hear muffled voices in the hallway, echoes of footfalls on the linoleum floor, the squeak of rolling wheels—seemingly innocuous sounds that now haunted her dreams—but she didn’t cry out. She was way past that.

“Help!” she had shrieked at first, for days it seemed, as loud as she could. And later, when it was clear no help was coming, she had only croaked “Why?” as they probed and prodded, her voice a thin, wheezy rasp. But there were no answers, so she had stopped asking.

Angel had always felt stronger and more capable than everyone—well, than Max—thought she was. But in the end, she was still just a little kid, with bones that could snap and a heart that could break.

She was broken. And totally alone.

A long, silent sob trapped in her chest, Angel curled up on the thin towel in the corner of the kennel and went to sleep.

“Wake up!” a voice barked after what seemed only moments.

So it wasn’t over, then.

Her heart raced in time to the familiar fear, the dread that made her whole body quiver, but Angel resisted. For several long, delicious moments she allowed herself to indulge the fantasy that it was Max calling her to wake. Even if they were on the run, even if Max was being bossy,
even if… Well, anything would be better than the reality she would find when she opened her eyes.

“Wake up! There’s no sense pretending! Your brain waves show you’re awake.”

Her blue eyes fluttered open just as a bucket of icy water was dumped on her head. Gasping, Angel scrambled farther into her corner, but she was a trapped animal, and she knew it.

The back of her head stung unbearably from the icy water and she tentatively touched it with her fingers. A small section of hair had been shaved, and a neat line of small stitches made tiny ridges under her fingers. They’d operated on her brain. A pitiful cry escaped her lips.

Max
, Angel thought frantically, overwhelmed with horror.
Max—help!

13

“LOOK HERE,” the voice commanded. “Pay attention.”

Angel blinked water out of her eyes and squeezed her hair, feeling chilly rivulets trickling down her back. Outside her crate, the room went dark. Angel saw extremely well in the dark, but then a lit screen flickered on, several feet away.

She saw a young child, a boy, with pale, almost white hair. He was lying on a table, very still, covered with a sheet. A crisp, white, sterile sheet. Angel shuddered involuntarily, the wounds on her body aching in response to the image.

The camera panned to look down on the boy, and Angel saw that he was in an operating room. He had a mask over his nose and mouth, and his eyes were clamped open.
Angel recognized the look in them. It was a feeling she knew well: pure, undiluted terror. Angel felt an icy coldness in her temples as the view zoomed in. There, on the little boy’s neck, was the trio of freckles, right where she knew they’d be.

Iggy.

It was Iggy as a little kid. Before…

Angel swallowed hard, her eyes trained on the large screen as gowned and masked doctors came in and shone spotlights onto Iggy’s operating table. One doctor, his eyes hidden behind large magnifying glasses, spoke directly to the camera.

“Today we’re experimenting with a new technique, only recently developed. It involves a surgical stimulation of a certain area of the rods and cones in the backs of this hybrid’s eyes. We estimate that the subject will have its night vision improved by at least four hundred percent.”

Then Iggy’s panicked blue eyes filled the screen.

Angel shook her head, horrified. She couldn’t watch. They weren’t really going to make her watch…?

But the video continued, and she couldn’t look away. She stared as the scalpel found its mark and plunged in as if slicing a boiled egg, as tweezers pinched and needles probed, as blood pooled and tubes suctioned it away.

As they hacked into him, like butchers.

She listened as Iggy’s agonized moans grew more and more frenzied. They sounded visceral, verging on madness, louder and louder and louder.

He was awake. The whole time.

Angel shrank back into her crate and squeezed her own eyes shut, the screams echoing in her ears. She had just seen a film of the crazy whitecoats at the School making Iggy blind.

“No!” she wailed, her voice joining Iggy’s.
“No no no no.”

The movie flickered to a stop and the room’s lights came back on.

“That was thirteen years ago,” someone said from out of view. “The techniques were unbelievably primitive, which no doubt caused the less than optimum results.”

Less than optimum?
Angel thought with rising hysteria.
You mean the total blindness? That result?

Once again she tried to hack into someone’s brain, the brain of even one person in this awful torture chamber. But it was like the room itself had a dampening field—she hadn’t been able to read a single thought the whole time she’d been there.

“But you see, Angel,” the voice went on smoothly, “we’ve made tremendous progress since then. Those were the days of cavemen. The science, the technique, is vastly improved. This time, it will go beautifully.”

“No,” Angel whispered again, her adrenaline surging and making her voice seem small, fuzzy. “No, please—”

A gloved hand reached for the door of her crate.

This time, they would operate on Angel. On her eyes.

14

“ARI, WHAT ARE you talking about?” Fang said. “We’re on the same side, remember? You saved Max.”

“Times change.” Ari smiled again and looked down the sight of his missile launcher, as if gauging how far away Fang was. Fang shifted his weight, primed to leap. “Having the same goal doesn’t mean we’re on the same side.”

“What—” Fang began, but he was cut off by a chorus of deep growls. Four more thugs climbed out of the truck to stand behind Ari, looking like a row of college linebackers. Their resemblance to Ari was freakish, surreal: They had the same glint in their eyes, the same unnatural, stretched-out features, the same wolfish undertones. Clones? Or just well-made copies? Fang didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out.

“Fang, who
are
they?” Star hissed. She was standing beside Kate, her face even tenser than usual, and Holden was right behind them. Ratchet was glowering at these ugly strangers, smacking the tire iron against his palm. Maya stood silently at Fang’s left wing—Fang remembered that she knew Ari.

“Erasers,” Fang answered quietly. “Human-wolf hybrids. Except they’re supposed to be extinct.”
So how was Ari alive?

And more important:
Why was he suddenly evil again?

Maya met Fang’s eyes.
Fight or flight?

“Enough talking,” Ari said, almost lazily. “Let’s play a game!”

Fight.

15

BEFORE FANG HAD time to think, Ari fired a missile.

Right at him.

Instantly, Fang unfroze, his instincts going from shock to hyperdrive in zero point two seconds. “Duck and cover!” he barely had time to shout as he threw himself sideways off the van. The missile missed Fang by a hair, singeing his shirt as it shot past.

And then—
boom!
Their van exploded in a mushroom of flames, flying metal, and roiling black smoke. Kate shrieked as a shard of glass swiped across her cheek, leaving a thin line of blood, but the sound was just barely audible above the roar of the fireball.

Fang jumped to his feet, ears ringing. The van was
nothing but a few smoldering, smoking chunks scattered in a circle around the blast zone.

Holden scrambled to his feet, dust-covered and wide-eyed, as Kate wiped blood from her cheek. Ratchet was hardly visible through the thick black smoke. “Man! Friggin’ almost busted my ears!”

“Never really liked that van anyway,” called Star, a little shakily. She, unlike the rest, looked perfectly unharmed and clean—the ability to be forty yards away in the blink of an eye sure did come in handy.

Fang’s gang dropped into their battle positions, but they all looked a bit wigged out. Even Fang was tense with an apprehension he wasn’t used to. Ari was a wild card, and even after all the training they’d done, even with their advanced abilities, he didn’t trust any of the gang under pressure like he had the flock. Well, any of them except…

Fang could make out Maya’s shape walking toward him through the dust cloud, her wings outstretched, looking powerful and ethereal in silhouette.

We’ll be okay
, Fang thought.

“Aw, I missed,” Ari said in his rusty voice. He was still grinning wickedly, like a tiger cornering its prey. “Enough of the theatrics. Let’s
do
this thing, Fang. You and me. Let’s make some history here, before your freaky friends get hurt.”

“Works for me,” Fang snarled, but to his surprise, Maya’s hand shot out in front of him. She stepped forward, putting herself between Ari and Fang.

“Hey,” she said to Fang. “Sorry—I got thrown. But listen: If we fight, we fight together. We’re a team. Got it?” Fang nodded, knowing there was no use arguing. She was as stubborn as a mule.

Like someone else he knew.

“Can’t ever just stay out of it, can you, Max?” Ari shook his head. “You’re looking a bit rough, sis. The hair’s a little
G.I. Jane
, don’t you think?”

“Not Max.
Maya
,” she said, running her fingers through her short pixie cut.

Ari laughed, his yellow fangs glinting. “Oh, yeah, Max II. That explains it, then—the delayed reflexes, the bravado. The life of a clone, so difficult.” Ari pouted in mock sympathy, and Maya’s eyes narrowed. “We understand your pain, don’t we, boys?” The row of Erasers behind him twitched impatiently, growling and muttering. “I have to say, though, Deux—as clones go, you seem like more of a cheap imitation. Did Fang pick you up in the discount aisle?”

“I said, the name is
Maya
,” she repeated, jaw clenched.

“Same, same,” Ari said, still smiling. “Fresh meat either way.”

And then, before Fang could even react, all heck broke loose.

Maya crashed into Ari, her eyes furious and vengeful, knocking the missile launcher out of his grasp with one swift kick.

Fang lunged toward them, protesting. Team or no team, Ari was
his
fight. But in their adrenaline-boosted frenzy, Ari’s goons leaped forward, driving Fang and the rest of the gang into defense mode, away from one another.

Away from Ari and Maya.

16

FANG WAS BACK in his comfort zone—that is, beating the living pus out of freaking Erasers, as usual.

I have to get back there
, Fang thought, trying to see through the wall of hulking bodies. Maya was hard core, but Fang had known Ari to be a vicious fighter, and this new version of Ari would likely be even tougher.

After he finished off another Eraser, blood from the guy’s nose spattering his black feathers, Fang pushed off the dusty ground and did an up- and-away. He hovered about fifty feet up, searching the scene.

There, near the demolished van, landing blow after blow, was Maya, holding her own. Ari was no longer smiling. He was clearly sweating with the effort, and his face was furious. And surprised. Fang almost smiled. Maya
was fearless and graceful and merciless. She was beautiful to watch.

He scanned the road and spotted Holden backed into a corner with an Eraser. Fang frowned. The kid’s technique was all off, and he looked terrified and in way over his head. The Eraser advanced on him, murder in his feral eyes.

The Eraser tore into Holden’s arm and raised his claw for the final blow, and Fang dove.

The dive was short and lightning quick—the half-dazed Eraser never saw him coming.

Fang stood up, looking around for Holden, and caught a glimpse of Ratchet wailing on some guy with the tire iron… right as Kate paused in her own fight and clipped Ratchet under the chin with her left hand, sending him reeling backward.

“Kate!” Fang yelled sharply. “Watch your aim!”

Ratchet was already standing back up, looking annoyed but ready to take on the next Eraser, when Star, appearing out of nowhere, spun him around just in time for Kate to land another bone-crunching blow to his chest. As Ratchet crumpled to the ground, the Eraser gave Kate a brief nod of acknowledgment.