Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure (7 page)

Alarm bells went off in my head, wailing,
Danger danger danger!
My alarm bells were not to be taken lightly.

Was it possible that Dr. Williams was a whitecoat?

“Actually, I feel a bit sick,” I said brusquely. “Come on, Dylan. Iggy!”

Iggy twitched on his stool and turned in the direction of my voice.

“C’mon, Ig,” I repeated, ignoring Dylan’s curious glance. “Time to go.”

“Max, the boys seem fine,” Dr. Williams said. Concerned or threatening,
concerned or threatening
? It was a question I had to ask myself way too often.

“No, I feel sick, too,” Dylan said.
Good boy.

Iggy wove through the maze of lab tables. “Gonna barf,” he informed Dr. Williams. “Gotta go.”

I strode toward the door, itching to hightail it out of there.

“Oh, no, you don’t, Maximum,” said Dr. Williams in a steely voice.

And here we go.
I sighed.

I leaned forward onto the balls of my feet, ready to spring into action. Dylan moved ever so slightly, placing himself a bit in front of me and in a good fight position. I felt Iggy tense up. Tapping his forearm twice, I breathed, “Little over six feet. Bit of a belly. Dead center.” Nobody
but Iggy—and maybe Dylan—would be able to hear me. Ig inclined his chin the tiniest bit. He understood.

Dr. Williams shuffled past the cardboard box of chicken bags to his desk, where he brought out some Post-its and started scribbling. I watched him the entire time. If he charged, I’d drag Iggy and Dylan to the left, roll over the empty lab table, and shoot out the door. If he yanked a gun out of his geeky teacher pants, we’d dive behind the table, chuck some scalpels for good luck, and then shoot out the door.

“So what’s the story, Doctor?” I asked Dr. Williams, crossing my arms. Everyone in the classroom was staring at us now. “Wait, I know—your plan is to make my life miserable? Or possibly destroy us?”

Dr. Williams smiled thinly. “What do you mean, Max? I just don’t want you to get in trouble for walking out of class.” He held out three hall passes.

Well, that was… unexpected. I narrowed my eyes at him, but he didn’t falter.

“Let’s go, boys.” I shrugged and took the passes, and we walked out of the classroom.

My alarm bells never stopped ringing.

21

“MAX’S LIFE IS in danger.”

Dylan’s breath quickened. Okay, now Dr. Williams had his attention.

“But you can keep her safe, Dylan. All you have to do is cooperate with us.”

After they’d fled the disastrous dissection lab, Dylan had realized that he’d left one of his textbooks behind, so he had gone back to get it.

Big mistake.

The other students were already gone, leaving only the biology teacher behind. Now Dylan was alone in the lab with him and the chicken carcasses, and it looked like he was, as Max would say, in deep, deep sneakers.

Dylan leaned against the table and frowned at the
teacher. “What do you want?” he said in a hostile voice he hoped sounded as tough as Max’s. He fingered a scalpel that one of the other kids had left behind, but it didn’t make him feel any more secure.

Dr. Williams smiled, making wrinkles appear around his mouth. “I’m not your enemy, Dylan. I have vital information for you, straight from Dr. Gunther-Hagen himself.”

“That’s impossible,” Dylan said, his muscles tensing even more at the mention of the brilliant, diabolical man who had engineered his creation. The man who’d given him his life, and introduced him to Max. “Dr. Gunther-Hagen is dead.”

“Oh, no, he’s very much alive,” promised Dr. Williams. “I’ve seen him myself.”

Dylan stared at Dr. Williams but didn’t respond. He had seen how Max looked at the biology teacher—with suspicion, distrust, and revulsion—and he didn’t trust this man for an instant.

“And Dr. Gunther-Hagen has a special project for you,” Dr. Williams continued. “A… mission, if you will.”

“What sort of mission?” Dylan asked doubtfully.

“A mission it is vital you keep secret from Max if you value her safety.” Dylan opened his mouth to protest, but Dr. Williams quickly cut him off. “It involves Fang.”

Dylan shifted uncomfortably at the sound of the unwelcome name, feeling more and more boxed in among the stacks of laminated papers, bins of educational videos, dissection tools, and models of the various stages of mitosis.

“Fang is a far bigger threat than you realize—a bigger threat than any of us realized.” Dr. Williams moved closer, seeming to delight in Dylan’s discomfort. He watched him gravely. “I’m sharing this information with you because we know you are good, Dylan, that you can be trusted. We
can
trust you, can’t we, Dylan?”

Dylan frowned. He did not like the turn this conversation was taking. Not at all. But at the mention of a secret, especially one about Fang, Dylan couldn’t help leaning closer. His breath quickened.

“Fang’s DNA, as it turns out, is different….
Dangerous.
Dangerous in a way that bad people might use for their own selfish means. You wouldn’t want to help the bad people, would you, Dylan?”

Dylan crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t expect me to buy this without an explanation.”

As if to emphasize the delicacy of the information, in a hushed voice Dr. Williams described tests, experiments, and discoveries that boggled the mind. Dylan had certainly seen, felt, and heard about a lot of strange twists and turns of science in his few short years on the planet—not the least of which was being genetically enhanced to be able to heal wounds with his own saliva—but his mind was whirring a mile a minute at this strange, fascinating information he was learning about Fang’s DNA. It could be the key to the most important medical discovery in human history….

But he wasn’t even sure he believed it. And he definitely resented Dr. Williams’s condescending tone.

“So you see, Dylan, it’s very important that we
contain the threat
. That’s where you come in. We need you to capture Fang, to
bring him to us
. You’re stronger than Fang, Dylan,” the doctor said, touching his arm. It was a compliment, but Dylan flinched. “Superior,” the teacher continued. “You were
designed
for this. And you’d be doing a great service to the world, of course,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

Dylan’s eyes drifted to one of the chickens, still splayed open on the dissection table, its wings pinned open. They wanted to run more tests. On Fang. Dylan thought back to what Max had said about tests in her early life—about dog kennels and needles and whitecoats and drugs. He shook his head. Regardless of his history with Max’s ex, and regardless of any threat Fang’s DNA might pose, Dylan didn’t hate him
that
much.

“No,” Dylan said, already heading out of this room that was full of lies and bribes and the smell of formaldehyde. He didn’t need to hear any more. “Find someone else to be your headhunter. You can tell Gunther-Hagen to stick his mission up his—”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Dr. Williams interrupted before Dylan had reached the door. “One more little tidbit, Dylan,” Dr. Williams called after him, holding up one finger. “If you don’t accept this mission, well, we’ll have to kill Max.”

22

ANGEL’S EYES FLEW open and she gasped for air, scrabbling at the sides of her cage in terror. She took a slow, deep breath.

It was just a dream.

Angel slumped against the plastic wall of the dog crate, feeling icky and shaky and sore all over. In the time she’d been held captive, she had been electrified, operated on, beaten, scorched, and worked to exhaustion. But this nightmare was worse than any of it.

It hadn’t been real… had it?

Every time she closed her eyes, images from the dream plastered the inside of her brain: Max, her neck covered in blood, dropping like a rock out of the sky… her brown eyes dulling with death as her skin grew pale… But Max
wasn’t dead, of course. Dead Max was the biggest oxymoron in history. Right?

Angel felt a rising panic. Her dreams, her visions, were almost never wrong. Except when she thought Fang would die. That hadn’t happened… yet.

She bit her lip, staring at the roof of her cage through half-lidded eyes, trying to make a connection. And then, like an image appearing through the fog, Fang materialized.

Joy, pure and powerful, surged inside her—until Angel realized that Fang wasn’t there. She was seeing him in another dreamlike vision. He was standing in a sea of red dust and blue sky, covered in blood and dirt and grime, but he didn’t look like Fang, exactly. He looked ferocious and crazed, a mad dog about to attack.
Unhinged.

“She’s dead,” Fang said, and Angel drew in a sharp breath, her whole body trembling. She hadn’t dared to think it could really be true.

Fang’s face twisted as he tried to control his anguish. He took a step toward two girls Angel recognized from Fang’s gang: Star and Kate.

“Maya died because of you,” he snarled.

Realization hit Angel like a ton of C4 bricks. Maya. Max II. Relief, and then horrible guilt, surged through her: Max was alive. It was
Maya
who was dead.

“We didn’t know,” Kate said, weeping, mascara running down her smooth brown cheeks. Kate was superstrong, Angel remembered, but she didn’t look strong now. “Ari wasn’t supposed to—” Her voice caught as she cried,
but Fang’s jaw was tensed, his features hard and calculating, his hands balled into fists.

Angel watched in dread. She knew that look. When crossed, Fang was deadly.
Get out of there
, she thought at the girls.

Star put an arm around her friend, and her usually harsh features softened. “We’re sorry, Fang, but Maya… wasn’t our fault. She was our friend.”

Fang’s laugh was harsh, his sneer horrifying. “Liar!” he shouted, towering over her. “Like I was your friend? You hated her,” he spat, his eyes flashing.

Star shifted uncomfortably and tucked a stray piece of blond hair behind her ear, her elflike face tightening. “I never wanted her dead,” she said quietly.

“Please, Fang,” Kate hedged, sensing he was about to snap. “We were afraid. There’s just too much danger following you. Jeb didn’t tell us they’d try to kill—”

“How do you know Jeb?” Fang asked, his voice low and murderous. A vein pulsed in his temple as he absorbed the flare of shock at hearing Jeb Batchelder’s name. Jeb, the man who’d once taken care of the flock like a father, but who’d turned out to be just another traitor. “How is he involved in this?”

“He said he’d keep us safe,” Star shot back, her blue eyes accusing. “Which is more than you could do.”

Fang’s growl was fierce and guttural as he lunged for Star’s throat like a wounded animal taking a last stand.

“Fang, don’t!” Holden pleaded, his voice cracking.

Ratchet had grabbed Fang’s arms. “Chill, man. Just chill. They’re not worth it.”

“You should know better than anyone that survival comes first,” Star said smugly, but she cowered as Fang surged against Ratchet’s grasp, gnashing his teeth.

Angel knew that Ratchet couldn’t hold Fang back if he really wanted to kill Star and Kate. As angry as he was, he was
choosing
to spare them.

“Traitors!” Fang shrieked after the girls as they took off down the desert road. “Go on, run. Get out of my sight! If I ever see your faces again I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands.”

Then the vision ended, leaving Angel with the image of Fang’s furious eyes, an ocean of hurt behind them. She blinked rapidly as the desert scene melted away, leaving her with a dull ache in her chest.

Max was alive, at least, but everything else seemed to be falling apart. Angel hunched into the emptiness of her dog crate, the thick smell of chemicals surrounding her and pain throbbing in every part of her body. She missed the flock so much.

If only Fang or Max were here with her.

23

“THAT IS MESSED up,” Ratchet said angrily, standing over Fang. “You’re not kicking us to the curb now, when we still gotta get back at that fanged freak. No way, man.”

Fang nodded, staring into the smoldering embers of their campfire. He was aching all over, and his shirt was still covered in Maya’s blood. “Sorry.”

“Is this about Star and Kate?” Ratchet demanded. “You think we’re like them? That I’d snitch? You
know
I don’t roll like that.” Even with his aggressive front, Fang could hear the real hurt in Ratchet’s voice. “Look at these battle scars.” Ratchet pulled up his sleeve, and his dark skin gleamed in the firelight. His arm was covered in slashes and bruises. “For
you
.”

“It’s not that,” Fang said. “I just can’t… do this. Besides
Star and Kate, Maya’s dead, and… Look, there’s nothing left. Fang’s gang was a stupid fantasy. I’m just better on my own.”

A fleeting thought of the flock made his chest tighten.

“No man is an island,” Holden said with an awkward laugh, but Fang didn’t react.

“Shut up, Starfish,” Ratchet said halfheartedly, kicking an empty can into the darkness in frustration.

Holden brushed his sandy hair out of his face and pulled absentmindedly at the chunk of new skin on his earlobe, which had already grown back after one of the Erasers had bitten it off. After a minute, he said in a small voice, “Where are we supposed to go now?”

Fang sighed. “Go home.”

“We don’t have
homes
to go back to!” Ratchet exploded. “My guys saw me go off with you. You think they’ll take me back? What’ve I got?
Nothing.
”

“I can’t go back, either,” Holden said softly. “My parents don’t want me around. They’re… they’re
scared
of me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.” Fang pinched the bridge of his nose. He was exhausted. Maybe more exhausted than he’d ever been. He was tired of making plans, of solving problems. He didn’t know how Max had stood it for so long. “You’ll figure it out.”

“So that’s it.” Ratchet’s voice was cold. “After all we’ve been through, you’re just saying, ‘So long, it’s been fun’?”