Maximum Ride Forever

1

Breathe, max. force the air in and out.

The air was heavy, and the rotten-egg stench burned the inside of my nose, but I focused on inhaling and exhaling as I ran. The earth shook violently and my feet slid over loose rocks as I raced down the slope. Red-hot coals pelted the earth around us as volcanic ash set our hair on fire and ate tiny, stinging holes in our clothes.

“Our backpacks!” I yelled, stumbling to a stop. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten them. “They’re all we have left. Tools, knives — the crossbow!”

“We left them in the field!” Nudge cried.

I shaded my eyes and looked up — the air was thick with spewing magma, ash, and glowing rock belched up from deep beneath the earth. “I’m going for them,” I decided. As the leader of the flock, responsible for everyone’s survival, I didn’t have much choice. “You guys get to that rock outcropping by the southern beach. It’s the only protection we’ll find.”

“You have five minutes, tops,” warned Gazzy, our nine-year-old explosives expert. “This whole part of the island’s gonna blow.”

“Right,” I said, but I was already sprinting up the hill through the hailstorm of fiery pebbles. I might have flown faster, but I couldn’t risk singeing my flight feathers right now. I grabbed the backpacks and raced back.

The ground shuddered again — a churning quake this time that felt like it was shifting my organs around. I lost my balance and catapulted forward, the provisions we needed torn from my arms as I face-planted hard.

Sprawled in the dirt, I focused through the dizziness just in time to see a smoking boulder the size of a refrigerator bouncing toward my head. I tucked my chin and rolled, saying a silent prayer.

Then I heard the sound — BOOM! It was like a rocket had been set off inside my brain. I may have blacked out, I don’t know.

Shaking my head, I opened my eyes and gasped. The boulder had obliterated the space where I had just been lying, but beyond that, the top of the volcano was now shooting off a thousand-foot column of liquid fire and smoke.

I gaped, mesmerized, as bright orange lava oozed over the cliff we’d called home for the last three months. Then the sky started to rain blazing rocks, big ones, and I snapped back to attention.

Craaaaap.

I leaped to my feet, frantically grabbing backpacks and scooping up the scattered tools that were all we had left. The ground around me was being covered with hot ash, and as I reached for Gazzy’s pack, it went up in flames. I snatched my burned hand back, swearing as the nerves convulsed with pain.

“Max, hurry!” My ears were ringing, but Angel’s voice was clear inside my head. Ordinarily, I would be annoyed at being bossed around by a mind-reading seven-year-old, but the terror behind her words made my throat dry up.

I looked back at the volcano. Considering the size of the boulders it was hurling out of its crater, conditions could be even deadlier farther down the mountain.

What was I thinking, leaving my family? Forget the tools — I had to run!

My mouth filled with the taste of deadly sulfurous gas, and as it tore at my lungs I wheezed, choking on my own phlegm while glowing bombs fell all around me. I stumbled through the ash and rubble, tripping again and again, but I kept going.

I had to get back to my flock.

Another hundred yards and I would be at the meeting place. Pumping my legs, I took the turn onto the rock outcropping at top speed...

And sailed toward a river of boiling lava.

2

Whoaaa—

I windmilled my arms as momentum propelled me out into midair, with nothing but red-hot death below. As gravity took hold and I felt myself starting to drop, my avian survival instinct kicked in automatically. A pair of huge speckled wings snapped out from my back and caught the air, swooping me aloft on a hot, acrid updraft. I quickly wheeled back to the outcropping and closed my highly flammable wings.

“Wow!” Total’s voice reached me over the sounds of the eruption, and then I saw his small, black Scottie-like head peer out from a shallow cave beneath the boulders. He came and stood next to me, his paws stepping gingerly on the hot ground. His small black wings were tucked neatly along his back. Did I mention that everyone in my mutant flock had wings? Yup, even our talking dog.

“I thought you were a goner,” he said, nose wrinkling from the horrible smell.

“Your faith in me is touching, Total.” I tried to steady my voice, but it sounded hollow and shaky.

Gazzy came out and nodded up at the volcano with seriously misplaced admiration. “She’s a feisty one. This is just the start of it.” With his love of fire and explosions, this eruption was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

“The lava’s, what? Fifty feet wide?” I backed up as the edge of the outcropping began to get swallowed up by the tar-like river — a thick black goo with brilliant flashes of orange where molten stone glowed with heat. “We’ll fly across, find a safer place on the northern side.”

Gazzy nodded. “Right now we can. But see that molten mudslide rolling toward us? It’s about two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. If we don’t get to high ground fast, we’re cooked.”

It already felt like my clothes were melting onto my body — clearly Gazzy knew what he was talking about.

“Let’s move!” I yelled.

Fang was already grabbing up the backpacks. Always calm and always competent, he was the steady rock to my whirling tornado. I rushed to join him, trying not to wince as my burned hand throbbed. We didn’t have much, but what we had we couldn’t replace: Besides our few weapons, we had some clothing stripped from the dead, cans of food that had washed up on shore, medicinal herbs plucked from now-extinct trees.

“Okay,” I panted. “Have we got everything?”

Nudge shook her head, her lovely face smudged with soot. “But if the lava reaches the lake...”

Then the water supply we’ve stored there will be obliterated.

“I’ll go back for the jugs,” Dylan and I said at the same time.

“The sulfur levels just tripled!” Iggy shouted. “Smells like acid rain!”

“I’ll go,” Dylan repeated firmly.

Fang was my true love, but Dylan had literally been created to be a perfect partner for me: It would be against his nature not to protect me if he could. It was both endearing and maddening, because, hello? I’m not so much a damsel in distress as I am an ass-kicking mutant bird kid.

Now Dylan touched my burned hand so tenderly that for a second I forgot about being tough and was just grateful for his help during the chaos. He nodded at the other kids. “They need you here. Just work on getting everyone to the northern beaches, and I’ll be back in a minute.”

I frowned. “Yeah. But be careful, okay?”

“You’re not actually worried about me, are you, Max?” His turquoise eyes twinkled playfully.

“No,” I said, making an ew face at him.

He laughed. “I’ll catch up.”

I turned, smiling and shaking my head, and of course there was Fang, standing behind me silent as a shadow. He cocked an eyebrow and I flushed. I opened my mouth to say something, but he was already reaching past me for the backpack Dylan had left.

“Hover chain?” Fang asked brusquely. He knew me better than anyone, so he knew when to leave things alone. When I nodded, he unfurled his huge black wings, then leaned down and picked up Akila. A big, beautiful malamute, she was the only non-mutant among us — and the love of Total’s life. Trying not to breathe the poisonous air, Fang leaped up and took off across the steaming river of molten rock.

“Okay, Iggy,” I ordered. “You’re up next! Nudge, get ready. Total, wings out. Gazzy and Angel, I’ll be right behind you. Let’s go, go, go!”

When I was sure my flock was airborne, I shook out my wings and followed, pushing down hard with each stroke as I struggled through the swirling ash. Burning and smoking debris pelted me from above, and waves of lava roiled below. The air was so toxic I could actually feel my lungs shriveling.

It was a short, hard flight. There was a fierce swirling wind from above that pushed us down almost as hard as we pushed up against it. The lava below us burned a deep red-orange, and as it took in more oxygen, it crackled loudly and started to spit. It took all my strength to stay aloft as my flight feathers curled up in embers. I blinked away tears, trying to spot my flock through the sizzling smoke and steam. The skin on my ankles started to blister — I was literally being slow-roasted, and I prayed that the others had made it across.

You are in a cool place. You are in Alaska. It’s freezing. Cool air in your lungs... I saw Fang emerge from the steam, a dark figure carrying a large dog. Everyone else was across now, but I veered back over the river of lava to do one final sweep, make sure we had everything...

My neck snapped sideways as a red-hot rock smacked into my head, and before I knew it I was careening down again toward the smoking, burping mouth of hell. I managed a strangled scream and then felt my whole body jerk as a hand yanked me upward.

“Gotcha.” Fang smirked at me with that crooked smile of his and held me in his arms. “What do you say we get outta here?” Even with the chaos swirling around us, my heart skipped a beat at that smile.

Our feet sank into the far bank just before the mudslide surged into the river. It sent lava shooting up hundreds of feet like a fizzy explosion of orange soda, but we were already out of its reach. And even though my feathers were smoking and my eyebrows were singed and I was gagging on ash, I was grinning as I ran.

We made it. We’ve all—

“Wait.” I skidded to a stop and turned around.

“What is it?” Fang asked, still tugging at my hand.

The hot air pressed in and sweat dripped down my face, but cold horror gripped my stomach like a fist.

“Where’s Dylan?”

3

Hours later, the swirling wind had turned into a pouring rainstorm. I squinted into the rain and billowing steam, scanning the horizon, searching for the silhouette of a kid with a fifteen-foot wingspan.

I began pacing back and forth across the rocky ledge on the northern side of the island, which was our go-to meeting place. All I saw was the volcano in the distance, still belching its plume of black smoke into the sky.

Just three months ago, this island had been a tropical paradise, a safe haven for dozens of mutant kids like us. That was before some kind of huge meteor had crashed into Earth and killed most everyone on it, as far as we knew. Then the resulting tsunamis arrived to flood our paradise, including the underground caves where the dwellings were.

Where my mom and half sister were.

We’d tried to leave, but the meteor’s impact had devastated everything within immediate flying distance. The neighboring islands? As black and crispy as toasted marshmallows. And part of me couldn’t just leave without some hope that my mom and Ella had somehow survived the floods. But now, with this erupting volcano as a strong motivator, we had to go whether I wanted to or not.

Dylan’s coming. He’s on his way. He’s fine.

I was pretty beat up, with serious burns on my arms and legs, singed feathers, and a lump the size of a goose egg growing out of my temple. I clenched my teeth and tried to focus on the pain, but even that didn’t distract me.

“Max, listen to me. You have to get in here,” Nudge pleaded from the mouth of a cave, where Fang was building a barricade. “It’s like a hurricane out there. You’ll get blown off the cliff!”

Unlike the now-toppled place where we’d made our home before the eruption, our new perch was high and safe from mudslides and lava. But from gale-force winds and acid rain? Not so much.

I’d already lost my footing more than once, but I shook my head. “Everything looks different from before. He probably just got turned around.”

Nudge’s curls got soaked immediately and stuck to her tan cheeks as she stepped out to survey the landscape. She frowned. “He would’ve found shelter by now, though. Dylan knows the rules.”

The members of my flock had survived because we looked out for the group first. If you went off on your own, you took your chances — there was no room for risk.

But this was different. Dylan would never, ever run away from me. That I knew.

“Come inside the cave,” Nudge urged, bending down to put her chin on my shoulder. We’re all tall and thin for our ages, but this past year twelve-year-old Nudge had shot past me and was now almost six feet tall — as tall as Fang. “We’ll crack one of the cans for dinner and—”

“Dylan!” I yelled suddenly, thinking I spotted movement on the horizon.

But it was just the charred trunk of a tree blowing around, and the only answer I got was the howl of the wind.

Nudge sighed, patted my back, and ducked back into the cave.

Gritty pellets of water whipped against my face. Who was I kidding? No one could fly in this weather. Well, almost no one.

Maybe I could just—

“No, you couldn’t. You’re not going anywhere,” a voice said from behind me.

I let out a breath. “Angel, just because you can read minds doesn’t mean you have permission to root around inside my head.”

Angel crossed her arms and studied me with a stern look, or at least as stern as a golden-haired, blue-eyed seven-year-old can look. We’d pretty much resolved our differences since she tried to overthrow me as leader of the flock, but she still had her moments. Right now, dirty-faced, wild-haired, and firm-chinned, the flock’s youngest member looked like a short, blonde dictator.

I narrowed my eyes. And who’s going to stop me? You know we need to find Dylan. We don’t abandon our own.

“Fang!” Angel shouted in response, her eyes never leaving mine.

Well. She’s not the only one with a firm chin around here. Without hesitation I turned on my heel and jumped off the edge. But before I could even unfurl my wings, I saw a flash of black out of the corner of my eye, and felt the breath knocked out of me as Fang’s body slammed into mine.

Together, we crashed back to the rocky ground, tumbling dangerously close to the edge. I kicked Fang’s shin, and pebbles skittered over the cliff. Fang wrapped his arms around mine, but I do not react well to being pinned. Bucking and writhing, I desperately tried to throw him off. Suddenly all that mattered was breaking free to go after Dylan.

“Max, calm down!” Fang snapped, and I pulled a fist free and punched him hard. “Whoa! What’s wrong with you?”

By now the others had come out to see what the commotion was.

“We. Need. To. Find. Dylan,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “Get off me!”

Cautiously Fang let me go, then jumped back out of my kicking range. He knows me so well.

“Max, we can’t go right now. It’s a toxic stew out there,” the Gasman explained. He should know. He’d earned his name when he was little, thanks to the toxic stew of odors he always produced. “I’m talking melt-your-face-off.”

“I can get through it. Dylan’s out there,” I spat. “Doesn’t anyone care about him?”

Gazzy chewed his lip and glanced away, and Nudge looked concerned. Of course they cared. Mr. Perfect had caused some strife in our flock at first, but he was one of us now, and even Fang looked grim as the reality of the situation set in.

“He’s not stupid,” Fang said. “He’s probably found high ground until the storm passes and the lava hardens. If he’s not back in the morning, we’ll go look.”

“I have to find him now!” It came out as a hysterical plea, which was such a shock that I stopped struggling. I’m not usually a sniveling weenie, but this was one of the most powerful calls to action I’d ever felt: I had to find Dylan.

Not we. I.

Fang blinked and sat back on his heels, looking at me strangely. “Tomorrow,” he repeated, and stood to go back to his barricade.

Slowly, acceptance replaced my unreasonable urge. Finally I nodded and tried to swallow my fear. As I stood up, sopping wet and filthy with ash, I asked myself a question — the question I had seen mirrored in Fang’s dark, brooding eyes:

Would I have reacted the same way for him, or for any of my flock?

Or does Dylan make me feel... something more?

4

We set out the next morning toward the lake where Dylan had gone for water. By then, the heat was unbelievable. It seeped up through the uneven mounds of already-hardening lava under our feet, and the ash cloud above us held it in like a blanket. Of course, heat rises, so flying was out of the question. The least-boiling place was on the ground. We were being slow-cooked like bird-kid stew, and I was the bitter onion, so mad at Dylan I could spit.

Most of us were doing okay regulating our body temperature — mutant genes, et cetera, et cetera — but poor Akila was looking a little rough. Her tongue hung out of the side of her mouth, but there was none of her signature drool, and she was panting super loud.

“Are you all right, my darling?” Total asked, trotting alongside her. Akila whined, and he jumped to lick her face a few times. That was just about the most real, doglike thing I’d ever seen Total do, and I’ll be honest, it kind of freaked me out.

“Once Dylan stops being an idiot and shows up with the water jugs, everything will be fine,” I said loudly. Despite our inborn sense of direction, I had no idea where we were — all landmarks were gone. Even the forest of tree stumps had disappeared under the rivers of gray deposits.

Finally we stumbled on the lake, but it wasn’t the blue thermal pool we remembered. A thick gray film covered the surface, broken only by the hundreds or thousands of silvery dead fish bobbing through it. The cloud of black flies hovering over them was even thicker than the ash.

“Well, might as well eat ’em before they rot.” Gazzy grabbed a silvery floater, brushed off the ash as best he could, and bit into the side. Then he looked up in surprise, his face as dirty and gray as the water. “Hey! It’s cooked!”

One by one we grabbed a cooked fish right out of the still-warm water, brushed off the ash, and ate our fill. One downside of our avian genes was a lightning-fast metabolism that meant we were nearly always hungry.

A little farther on, we saw it: Our precious stockpile of water was untouched, the jugs covered with ash but intact. We weren’t going to die of thirst — at least not yet.

Luck loves Maximum Ride, I thought, cupping my hands so Akila could drink. But then my heart plummeted. If the jugs hadn’t been moved, it could only mean one thing:

Dylan hadn’t even made it this far.

For hours we stayed close to the shore where the ash was less dense, and took turns flying through the debris to search the cliffs. But the volcano was still pumping black smoke, and the air was getting harder to breathe.

I was bent over after one of these missions, hacking up some blood and wondering if my fast-healing ability included my guts, when I spotted a charred gray knob poking out of the rubble.

“Another cave bone,” I sighed. “Looks kind of femur-y.” That’s how we had known the island’s underwater tunnels had collapsed after the apocalyptic meteor: The corpses had started washing up on shore. We were still finding them, almost three months later. I didn’t know if any of the bones had belonged to my mother or my half sister. How would I be able to tell?

“Not necessarily.” Fang’s lips pressed together.

I held it up: Though charred, it was totally a human femur.

Gazzy shook his head. “It’s burned. We don’t know how old it is. The lava would’ve done that if it had been a cave corpse or someone more recently, like...”

Yesterday.

I was having trouble swallowing, trouble breathing.

“Let’s go back to the cave,” Nudge said gently. “We can try another path—”

I whirled around. “Angel, try to tap into Dylan’s thoughts. He’s got to be somewhere. He’s just hiding. Or looking for us. I’m sure he’s nearby.”

Angel looked away.

“Ig? Can’t you smell him or something?”

Iggy leaned heavily against a rock. Flakes of ash fell from his white-blond hair when he shook his head. Though his eyes were unseeing, they were full of pity.

“It’s not him,” I insisted, kicking ash back over the bones.

“It’s like Dylan’s cognitive connection just stopped,” Angel said finally. “Like with your mom and Ella—”

“We never found their bodies.” My jaw tightened. “We don’t know what happened to them. Just like we don’t know what happened... here.”

It was getting harder to say his name.

“Everything is dead, Max.” Angel’s tone was firm. “Everything except us.”

“No.” I wanted to shake her.

“Guys.”

I looked down the beach. At first I couldn’t make out what Fang was holding, it was so black and warped. Then he turned it over, and I saw a tiny flash of color.

That spot of bright green — a shade Dylan loved, that none of us had seen since the last of the trees had died — was enough to buckle my knees, and enough to force out the awful, wounded sob that had been building in my chest all day.

Because that burned-to-cinders object Fang cradled in his hand was one of Dylan’s size-twelve sneakers.

5

I watched the shadow of our V moving across the water hundreds of feet below — one dog in a harness, one bird kid short on the right side — and clutched the charred sneaker tighter to my chest as my wings carried me. We couldn’t give Dylan a twelve-gun salute, or even a funeral. At least we could give him one last flight.

I banked left, and the flock fell into line behind me, following like an extension of my own body. Ahead of us, sunlight peeked through the eerie rainbow of color that had illuminated the sky since D-day. Below us, the water still churned with the rough waves left over from the tsunami, and a chain of volcanoes rose from the depths of the ocean. Their combined cloud of ash was racing to cover everything, from the pink cliffs of the islands to the white feathers of Angel’s wings.

I’d thought flying would make me feel better, like it always had. Wind rustling my hair and muting my thoughts as I soared into the open. No sounds, no obstacles — just the ocean before us and sky all around. Freedom.

Growing up in a cage makes you really appreciate open spaces.

But it had been a while since I’d seen the world this way, and taken stock of all we’d lost. Cities. People. The grief felt like a cold, hard knot in the center of me, pulling me down, down into all that gray water.

I felt a hand on my left shoulder and sensed Fang’s dark figure just outside my peripheral vision. “You okay?” I nodded and slowed down, realizing we’d been flying for probably half a day.

I’d just wanted to get ahead of the cloud, to lay Dylan to rest under a clear sky. But the ash was moving too fast.

I held the shoe out and the kids hovered in a circle. It was just a shoe, just a piece of half-melted rubber. I took a breath.

You have to do it. Do it for the flock.

“Good-bye, Dylan,” I whispered.

“Good-bye,” my flock echoed.

Then I opened my fingers. Just like that.

As I watched the sneaker plummet, I remembered Dylan falling from the roof when I’d taught him to fly, barely a year ago. The feeling of his body beside mine that night we took refuge in the desert. The tree house he had made just for me. His last words: “I’ll catch up.” Wasn’t he always trying to catch up with me? I drew a shaky breath.

No.

I dove hard, reaching toward the chunk of blackened rubber. But I was too late, and I watched the waves swallow up all that remained of Dylan.

I flipped and shot back into the sky, angry tears streaming down my face. He was just one more person who had fallen beyond my reach. Like my mom and Ella.

I’d refused to believe it. Even when Angel stopped hearing their thoughts from the underground caves, and even when the months had passed without any sign of life other than us, I couldn’t accept that we were all alone.

Their bodies could still be there, somewhere.

“Let’s turn back,” I shouted over my shoulder.

Fang looked alarmed. “You want to go back to the island?”

“It’s our home.” My words were thick, threatening another waterfall. Their home.

He flew up next to my ear. “Max, it’s a wasteland,” he said urgently. “And even if we could somehow breathe the air, we’ll never make it back before nightfall.”

“It doesn’t—”

“Them’s the rules, Max.” Angel’s voice in my head.

“I felt a pressure change a couple of miles back — I’m pretty sure we passed land to the west,” Iggy offered from my other side. Despite his blindness — or because of it — his other senses were sharper than razors. “It might be worth checking out.”

We’d passed other islands before, but most were tiny — no shelter, no fresh water. When we reached the one Iggy had felt, it was different. Bigger. We couldn’t even see where it ended. Actually, we couldn’t see much: Three active volcanoes just off the coast were spewing towers of lava and ash. It made us feel right at home. Not.

It was a big detour to get around them, but once we were closer to the huge island we saw square cliffs in the distance, spaced like jack-o’-lantern teeth. And near the water’s edge, a blur of something big and white and triangular.

Like sails billowing in the wind.

“Is that a ship?” My heart sped up.

Are there people here? Alive?

“No, it’s...” Nudge hesitated. “I think it’s the Sydney Opera House.”

I spun around to stare at her. “How do you know what that even looks like?”

“Because I know things,” she replied curtly. “More than you think I do.” And then, “Haven’t you ever seen Finding Nemo?”

I cackled. “That is not seriously what you’re basing—”

“Actually, I think I’d recognize the pinnacle of modern architecture,” Total said, “and that is not...”

I tuned him out, really studying the shoreline. I saw the skeletal remains of a bridge in the surrounding harbor, and the white blur started to look more like a building than a boat. But it didn’t make sense — Sydney, Australia, was a huge city.

I worked my wings harder, squinting through the ash to see inland. “That would mean those weird cliffs—” Angel nodded, following my thought.

They’re skyscrapers.

6

Sydney was not the booming metropolis we had heard of. In fact, it was pretty much uninhabitable.

Huge waves crashed through the city, flowing through angular valleys created by the buildings. Abandoned cars bobbed like bath toys in the current before they were tossed against the salt-crusted, crumbling skyscrapers. The foam sprayed three flights up.

There were no people anywhere. Dead or alive.

“Where do you think everyone went?” Nudge asked.

“Maybe they’re all at the opera,” I said dryly.

Nudge grinned. “I told you I knew what I was talking about.”

“Seriously, though, Max. Shelter...”

I looked at Iggy’s pale, drawn face, and the circles underneath Angel’s eyes. I saw the salt caked on Nudge’s parched lips. I heard the sharpness in Gazzy’s cough and realized Akila had barely made a sound since we’d left. Despite their jokes, my flock was just about at its breaking point.

I felt the exhaustion settle into my own body. “What are you proposing?”

Fang nodded upward. “I say we break into a penthouse suite.”

Nudge squealed, clapping her hands, and it was settled.

If you want to know how seriously bad weather can get, try to fly through it, like, without a plane. The falling volcanic ash mixed with the ocean spray, forming a gritty mud that pelted us. All visible surfaces were coated in a concrete-like sludge, and the buildings looked like enormous crumbling gravestones.

And my little flock? We looked like gargoyles, dragging ourselves up the side of a tall skyscraper. Our wings grew heavier and heavier, coated with what soon felt like stucco, but we moved them up and down, up and down, and clung to the ledges for dear life. At the very top, Nudge’s deft fingers brushed against the metal lock and, easy-peasy, we were in.

It was an office, not the luxury apartment I’d been hoping for, but it was dry and surprisingly well preserved. The halls were still lined with glass-framed posters that said things like LET IT FLOW and ATTITUDE MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE.

I rolled my eyes and knocked that last one off the wall.

Angel curled up under a desk, folding her crusty wings beneath her. Forget mind-reading, that was her true talent: That kid could sleep anywhere.

Me? I was more interested in tracking down some chow. That lava-cooked, acidic fish was the last thing I’d eaten, and my stomach wrenched at the memory. Fang and Gazzy followed me on the search for a kitchenette, ever the eager consumers.

Just as I was shaking the box of aged, crumbled crackers into my mouth and thinking we’d made out pretty well considering, you know, the apocalypse, I heard a low, lingering growl.

“Jeez, Gasman.” I scrunched up my nose, bracing for the stench to hit, but Gazzy held up his hands: Not me.

Max, get out of there! Angel’s voice.

None of us ever question a warning. In a split second I had dropped the cracker box, signaled Gazzy and Fang, and rushed to the door. It was already too late; the doorway was full of snarling creatures trying to get through at the same time — to us.

“What the heck are they?” Gazzy breathed, jumping onto the kitchenette table and assuming a fighting stance. Fang and I both leaped onto the counter, muscles tensed, adrenaline pumping.

“No idea,” I murmured. “Not Erasers. Not Flyboys. Not anything I’ve ever seen.”

They were — doglike, but huge, easily three times the size of a Great Dane, but with a bulldog’s heavily muscled build and a mastiff’s powerful, snapping jaws. Their long-fanged mouths were already slavering in anticipation of a bird-kid breakfast.

And we were trapped.

7

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” I snarled.

“Are those hyenas?” Gazzy asked.

“Or just ugly mutant steroid dogs?” Fang said.

The things were hideous, their furless pink skin wrinkled and speckled with flaky black spots. Their flat, massive heads were too big for their bodies — which, of course, meant bigger teeth, stronger jaws.

“Are they sort of hyena-ish?” I asked. “Either way, they look rabid, and they’re bad news.”

With our luck, it made perfect sense that these hellbeasts were the only other creatures that seemed to have survived the apocalypse, and that they somehow were thirty stories up a skyscraper, running loose in the hallways, ready to corner us.

Quickly I took stock. Small, windowless room? Check. Useless weapons, such as plastic cutlery? Check. Villains engineered specifically to destroy us... to be determined.

The first hellhound flattened its ears and bared its teeth, a low growl building in its throat. Even with me standing on the countertop, their heads came up nearly to my waist. And they were vicious. This was Cujo meets Marmaduke meets the Hound of the Baskervilles.

“How many?” Fang asked quickly. I barely heard him over the high-pitched whining, low growling, and eager, hungry barking.

“Um, somewhere between five and... like, twenty,” I said as more flat, slick heads pushed in through the doorway.

“What are they waiting for?” Gazzy asked. “Maybe we can intimidate them.” With a roar of his own, he snapped open his ten-foot wings, sending bits of crud flying. And this seemed to be what the animals were waiting for. Their attack instinct kicked in and they sprang to life, crashing through the doorway at us, teeth bared. Their growls became a frenzied, barking hysteria that was deafening in the tiny room.

I fended them off okay at first, with roundhouse kicks and evasive pivots. But then a particularly ugly beast with pink eyes reared up on its hind legs and dug its front claws into my chest, and the full weight of a two-hundred-pound animal made me stagger sideways.

I barely heard a sharp hiss from Fang as one of them sank its incisors deep into his shoulder, but I couldn’t spare a glance — I had a huge snapping muzzle inches from my face. Its tongue slobbered over its teeth in desperation, and its pink eyes bulged, crazed with hunger. They were starving.

For a second, I felt a wave of pity for them. But just for a second. In a choice between me and something else, I always choose me. So I gripped Pinky’s lower jaw with my hands and head-butted the mutt right between the eyes.

It skidded like an ungainly bowling pin into the giants behind it, but they weren’t down for long and when they sprang to their feet, there was a new hatred in their eyes.

“Hang on, Max! We’re coming!”

I snapped my head around to see Nudge and Akila pushing their way through the entrance. Nudge was wielding a desk chair in one hand and a marble statuette in the other. I’d never seen Akila look so fierce — she was snarling, her teeth bared, and seemed so much more doglike than she had, say, at her wedding. But even though Akila was fairly big, she was dwarfed by these monsters.

“Nudge! No!” I yelled. “Find a safe place!”

I gave one vicious kick to my closest attacker and then grabbed for the sink hose behind me. Slamming the water on full blast, I sprayed all around, aiming for eyes, ears, and open mouths. The barking and howling hit a higher pitch.

On the other side of the kitchen, Gazzy fended the animals off as best he could, which was pretty dang good, but he was covered with bites and scratches and looked like he was starting to tire. One vicious hellhound dove for him, huge jaws open like a vise. I quickly sprayed icy water into its ear, and Akila snarled and dove at the creature, tearing into its throat. Her fur was stained with blood, and more blood dripped from her mouth. She looked pure wolf in that instant, and as they leaped, her cry pierced the air.

I lashed out however I could — the sprayer, karate chops to noses, hard kicks to their ribs, and, yes, plastic forks to the ears — anything to hold them back, but they just kept coming.

“Max!” Nudge cried, and I watched, horrified, as one leaped at the side of her face and clamped on with those long yellow teeth, tearing flesh from bone. Fang stabbed at it with a knife and it yelped and jumped back.

Nudge stumbled into the fridge, her eyes wide and dazed. She held her hand over the left side of her face, but blood ran through her fingers and spilled down her shirt.

Fang gave one animal a brutal punch in the face that made it yelp and fall back. My own arms and legs were pretty torn up, and I started to wonder... if there were actually just too many of them.

So I did what you’re never supposed to do in a dogfight: I charged.

And then the room exploded.

Well, part of it. Before I got to Nudge’s attacker, chunks of plaster shot toward me as one of the walls blew inward. For just an instant, there was silence as we all stared at the destroyed wall in surprise.

On the other side of the gaping hole, Iggy stood in the hallway, waving dust away from his face. “Go!” he yelled, choking on smoke.

While the beasts were still stunned, Fang grabbed Akila, and I reached for Gazzy’s and Nudge’s hands. We. Freaking. Ran.

Another floor-shaking blast made a few more of the creatures fall back, but there were plenty of them still on our heels as we ran through the mazelike hallways, searching for a way — any way — out of this. Then straight ahead of us we saw a conference room lined with big glass windows, and there was no time to hesitate.

“Abandon ship!” I shouted.

Just as the monsters rounded the corner behind us, I closed my eyes, tucked my head down, and crashed through a window, feeling the shards explode around me.

8

I careened like a broken helicopter down half of those thirty flights, but finally I snapped my wings open and righted myself. My wings were still heavy and full of crud — cleaning them off would be job one. After quickly counting heads — all accounted for — I looked back to see the bloodthirsty animals snapping their jaws at us. Several unfortunates got pushed out the window by their eager packmates, and we swerved out of the way as they twisted through the air, baying as they plunged downward.

“They’re more like cry-enas now!” Gazzy joked wearily as we headed toward the outer edges of Sydney.

I was so dizzy with relief, I didn’t even feel the bite marks on my hands, or the feathers missing from my wings, but all of us looked like we’d been put in a blender on “chop.”

I was especially worried about Akila. I eyed the bundled form that Iggy carried in the harness, and saw red splotches growing on the cloth. Nudge, too, was a bloody mess, and she flew with one hand holding the deeply torn flap of skin in place against her cheek.

When we stopped on a hill overlooking the city, we took stock of our injuries. Nudge seemed to be injured the worst, and I ripped off the sleeve of my ratty shirt. “Does it hurt bad?” I asked, tying the flannel under her chin.

“It’s f-fine,” she lied, her voice quivering as she bit back the pain.

I thought of all the times she’d spent scrapbooking fashion models and tried to make a joke of it. “What girl doesn’t want more defined cheekbones, am I right?” She nodded and forced a weak smile. “Zombie chic,” I pressed, and she actually giggled.

“Lame, very lame, Max.” Nudge shook her head and adjusted the bandage, but her eyes were smiling.

“Does that count as zombie chic?” Angel pointed.

A silence fell over the flock as we took in the grim scene below us.

So that’s where all the people are.

Our hill overlooked a subdivision, and while we couldn’t see inside any of the houses from our perch, we definitely saw the circular cul-de-sac drives — or the vague shape of them. I only caught a glimpse of cracked asphalt here and there, because the cul-de-sacs were littered with... skeletons.

Humans, animals, young, old. The ash was doing its best to bury them — it had already piled in drifts several feet deep in some places — but you could still see thousands of corpses in the mass grave.

“Jeezum,” I whispered.

It was a modern Pompeii: Some of the skeletons were curled in fetal balls, with arm bones circling skulls. Others lay side by side holding hands, or clasping their own hands together. Many looked like they’d been crawling away, their jawbones hinged open in a permanent, silent scream.

I felt the vomit rise in my throat.

“What happened to them?” I asked helplessly, looking for something, any type of answer that might make this somehow easier to understand. “The volcanoes couldn’t have erupted until pretty recently, or this whole place would be one big ash pit. But something killed these people long enough ago so that only bones are left.”

Gazzy started hacking again, and Nudge lifted a worried eyebrow. “Ash inhalation from some other volcano?” she suggested. When we’d flown over the open ocean, we’d seen any number of “new” islands being formed. It was like the earth itself was splitting in two, and volcanoes were erupting everywhere.

Gasman shook his head. “What about aftershocks from wherever that sky fire thing crashed? We got a lot of quakes on our island, and that’s hours from here.”

“Or starvation?” Iggy countered. “Maybe they didn’t have any rats...”

“Everywhere has rats,” Angel scoffed. “Besides, they’ve got loads of snakes, rabbits, dogs, cats, deer, even kangaroos. Tons of protein for the taking.”

“Maybe the climate change drove all the animals nuts and they went on a murderous rampage,” Gazzy said.

“Or someone — or something — more powerful did...” That was probably Nudge’s conspiracy-theorist mind going into overdrive, but I wasn’t ruling anything out.

“Could’ve been mass suicide,” I said seriously.

“Stop it. Just stop it, will you?” Total snarled suddenly, and I looked at him in surprise. “These aren’t statistics. They were families. Look at them holding each other, protecting each other. They died with dignity. Just like... Akila.”

Shocked, I looked at the bundled cloth that Iggy had set down carefully when we’d landed. I hadn’t even thought to check on her, though I’d noticed Total licking her face and talking quietly to her. Oh, Akila. Not you, too.

“Total, no—”

Gently Total nudged her nose with his, and I hurried over to kneel by the still, beautiful dog. Her eyes were closed and I put my hand on her side, praying that I would feel her ribs rising and falling with breath. I didn’t.

“Total, no,” I whispered again, unable to think of anything else to say. The rest of the flock crowded around. Nudge and Angel had tears rolling down their cheeks, leaving odd, pale lines where they washed away dirt.

“A couple of the Cryenas got her good,” Total said, his words muffled. “And the ash — she breathed too much of it. She sacrificed herself. Miserable excuses for canines...” He coughed a bark. “Pure courage. Pure grace. That was my Akila.”

Weeping, Angel wrapped her arms around Total’s scruffy neck, and then he couldn’t keep his composure any longer.

If you’ve ever heard a dog cry, you know it’s absolutely heartbreaking, a wail that cuts to the rawest emotion and shakes it in its teeth. Total howled for Akila, but also for Dylan, for the thousands of people below, for the whole world. And by the time he was finished, every one of us was all cried out.

9

Total chose Akila’s burial site at an abandoned cottage way out in the middle of nowhere. We had no clue if the soil was full of nuclear radiation or if the air was breeding deadly viruses by the second, but there was no ash cloud in sight right now, and that was good enough for us.

The cottage was run-down and looked like it hadn’t been lived in in years, but we found a shovel and a hoe in a lean-to, and Fang kicked in the front door in the hopes there would be stuff inside we could use.

We started digging in the hard, parched earth. From the corner of my eye I saw Akila’s swaddled form, and something in me felt like it had split open.

“You okay?” Fang asked. He lifted my hand and ran his thumb over my dirt-caked fingertips. “I can take over.”

His touch felt solid. Reassuring. But I just couldn’t handle it right now. I just wanted to feel my body working. I wanted to dig. Or scream.

“I’m good.” I stepped back stiffly, and Fang let his hand fall.

When the hole was ready, Fang gently placed Akila in it. Total’s soft sobs made my heart feel like it was wrapped in barbed wire, but as leader, I knew I had to step up and say a few words.

I cleared my throat. “Here lies our brave friend Akila,” I said. “She deserves better than this unmarked grave, and to tell you the truth, she deserved better than us. I wish we’d taken better care of her. But even so, she was a true and loyal friend to us, a loving wife to Total, and a fierce fighter under the worst circumstances.”

I had to clear my throat again. My eyes were burning from the hot, dry dust, and I brushed my sleeve over them. Nudge had started crying and was trying to keep the stinging tears out of her injury, which had barely started to scab over.

“I don’t know about heaven or anything,” I said gruffly. “Though God knows we’ve seen a thousand kinds of hell. But I know that somewhere, Akila is running free, the sun on her face and the wind in her fur, and she’s got plenty to eat and isn’t in pain.”

That was when I started crying. I barely got out my last words: “Good-bye, Akila.” Then I took a handful of gritty dirt and sprinkled it on her cloth. One by one, we each threw a handful of dirt on her, and then Total backed up to the pile of dirt and kicked furiously, filling in the hole faster than we could have with the shovel.

“Good-bye, my love, my princess, my beautiful bride,” he sobbed. “Our love will never die.”

We were all quiet for a couple of minutes.

“I wish we had flowers to put here,” said Angel, wiping her face and leaving a smeared streak.

“Maybe there’s something inside we could use as a marker,” Fang said, turning to the house. “Like a statue or vase or something. Be right back.” He headed inside.

We stood in awkward silence until a distant, bone-chilling howl made us all jump... and set the Gasman off.

“What else is alive out there? Max?”

“I don’t know, okay?” I said, suddenly exhausted and frustrated and so, so sad about Akila. “I don’t have all the answers. The world looks like it’s been completely obliterated. So whatever possibly survived is going to be... pretty... yucky.”

“I’m sure rats and cockroaches made it,” Iggy muttered.

“And us,” said Angel.

Dropping the shovel, I covered my face with my hands.

Breathe. Just breathe.

This was it: I had finally hit my breaking point.

“Guys?” Fang called from inside the house, oblivious. “Nudge, c’mere, I need you.”

“Akila won’t mind about the stupid fake headstone!” Nudge answered miserably.

“I think you’ll all want to see this.” Fang stuck his arm out the window, and I stared dumbly at the object he was holding.

Somehow, in the middle of this torched wasteland, Fang had found a laptop.

10

We gawked at Fang like he was holding an extra-large double-cheese stuffed-crust pizza.

“It’s a laptop,” I said, frowning in disappointment. “So what? With no Internet, all we could do is play solitaire. We need either actual food or a marker for Akila’s grave.”

“It’s a tablet, actually,” Fang corrected as we came nearer. “It’s smaller, see? And it has a touch screen!”

I rolled my eyes at his mocking tone. “Can we eat it?” I flicked the hard casing. “Can we use it to fend off the psycho hounds?” I gestured toward Nudge’s bandaged cheek.

“Let me see that.” Nudge took the tablet, turning it over in her hands. “I can sense the owner’s fingerprints. He was anxious, searching for something.”

“I knew it!” Gazzy punched the air victoriously. “I knew there were still other people alive out there. It’s not just us and the Cryenas!”

Fang’s eyes flicked to mine, challenging. Nudge did have the power to feel leftover energy, but since we didn’t know how old the energy was, it didn’t necessarily mean anything. And when you’ve had the kind of epically bad luck I’ve had, you learn not to get your hopes up.

Still, it could mean something — a record of what happened, or a connection to the rest of the world...?

“It means answers.” Angel sat on the cracked kitchen counter, swinging her legs. The way she said it — with that weird authority she had — made it seem real, and there was a collective inhale, a quickening pulse, a feeling that maybe, possibly, we might just have a shot.

I bit my lip and then asked the only question that really mattered: “Does it even work?”

Nudge held down the power button for a few moments and then looked up with a frown, like she’d been betrayed. Nothing.

“There’s no electricity to charge it, either,” Fang said, flicking a dead light switch.

I sighed. “Like I said, just another useless piece of junk some poor sap left behind.” Seeing some plastic flowers on the table, I grabbed them and turned to head out to Akila’s grave.

“Max, be careful out there,” Gazzy said. “We definitely heard some kind of wild animal.”

“What if we could charge it another way?” Iggy called after me. A high-pitched squeal made me cover my ears, and I turned to see him standing in the doorway to the next room, holding up a dusty radio.

“Where did you get that?”

Ig grinned. “Oh, just another useless piece of junk I found lying around.” He fidgeted with the dial, but all we heard was the crackle of static. “Looks like the antenna’s shot, but it has a charging panel — solar powered.”

“Doesn’t that mean you need sun?” I squinted out the window doubtfully. The sky was dark with ash.

“She still might have some juice in her.” Iggy shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

Somehow, of course, Iggy found some doohickey thingamabob, fiddled with it, and managed to plug the tablet into the radio. We crowded around, seeing our anxious expressions reflected on the touch screen. The tiny red light on the power cord blinked on, and we waited.

And waited.

“It’s not working,” I huffed, tapping the screen.

“Patience, Max.” Total licked away the smudge from my grimy finger. “Just give it a minute.”

But after five minutes, the radio started to hum with the effort, and the light was still red.

“It’s not going to be enough.” I started to pace.

Then, just as the radio took its last, groaning breath, a welcoming note chirped from the speakers, and our reflections faded as the screen glowed to life.

11

Nudge’s hands hovered over the keyboard, and the rest of the flock huddled around her. “What should I look up?”

“Whoa, you actually have Internet?” Iggy asked. “I’m guessing this guy probably hasn’t paid his wireless bill in a while.”

“Five G.” Nudge wiggled her magnetic fingers. “I know it makes no sense, but don’t question it.”

We tried all the major news sites. Over and over, we saw the same thing: a white screen with stark black type that read CONNECTION TO SERVER FAILED. Then Nudge started trying anything she could think of. We squealed when an actual site popped up, but saw that it was a shopping list for a homemade disaster kit. Gazzy found “antidiarrheal medication” particularly hilarious, while my stomach growled loudly over such delicacies listed as “canned fruit and meats.”

But no contact with an actual human. No clues.

Nudge was trying yet another website.

“Hey, this one works!” She grinned as the log-in field popped up.

“Seriously?” I smirked at her. “The world ends and you want to check your Fotogram? Here, I’ll give you another ‘like.’ ”

“Shh,” Nudge said, swatting at my hand. “I just want to see something.”

She typed #apocalypse into the search field, and the screen lit up with images — pages and pages of disaster pics taken with cell-phone cameras. Most of the scenes were beyond anything we could’ve imagined, and believe me, we have dark, twisted imaginations.

“Whoa,” I managed to croak.

Because what else could you say about a selfie of a woman clutching a Bible as, behind her, a two-hundred-foot tsunami obliterated Los Angeles?

Or a shot of silver fish flopping on marble staircases while the train tunnels in New York’s Grand Central Station flooded with water?

We saw the city of Tokyo decimated by earthquakes. The president of France speaking to the press, wearing a hazmat suit. A row of houses in Spain buried by a freak blizzard.

It was as if the world had been tossed in the air and all the puzzle pieces were jumbled.

A sea of blue-masked faces showed us Hong Kong under quarantine. We saw forests burning, buildings burning, and people burning. Dead birds rained from the sky in so many of the pictures, they had their own hashtag: #crispycritters.

This was the end of the planet, chronicled before us.

There were hundreds of thousands of images, but the events were so varied, the effects so utterly weird, that everything started to blur together.

What happened? didn’t begin to cover it. It seemed like everything had happened, and more.

“Hey, we should check the blog,” Fang said suddenly. “I haven’t updated it since we took off in Pierpont’s jet, but it had a ton of followers...”

Nudge’s fingers were already flying across the touch screen as she nodded. “And maybe some of them are still checking in.”

12

After Fang’s last post, there were a bunch of comments congratulating us on stopping the Doomsday cult, entries worrying about Angel because she had been missing, and a few standard Max-is-my-idol rants (no biggie). Then we got to the good stuff — the Fang-girls.

I started reading those comments aloud, of course. “ ‘Come to Cali, the water’s warm! Love, TeeniBikeeni.’ ” I wiggled my eyebrows at Fang. “Babette99 says she’ll give you a tour of Rome if you want to experience love, Italian style. Ciao, Babette!”

Fang blushed a deep red. “Okay, we get it, Max. Ha-ha.”

“And look! Brklynb8b likes vampires — guess your name gave it away, Snaggletooth. Are those the kind of comments you always got? No wonder you used to spend so much time on this thing,” I cackled.

“All of these are from January eighth,” Gazzy said. “That would’ve been it — wouldn’t it? — the day before...”

The laugh died in my throat as we all stared at the glass screen, realizing these might be some of the last words written in the history of the world.

Total had been flopped morosely on the floor, but now he said, “They don’t really seem to do our culture justice, do they?”

But then again, what words could?

“Those aren’t all of them.” Fang pointed. “Some of the postings are more recent if you keep scrolling. Check out the time stamps here. JumpinJoanie wrote ‘stay strong, bird kids. 6 jugs of water with the flock’s name on em in traverse city michigan.’ That one’s from March.”

As Nudge scrolled down, it was clear that Fang’s blog had turned into some sort of rogue news site since the Event — whatever it was — had happened. The reports were either posted as Anonymous or under Friends of Fang, and they came from kids across the globe, sharing what had happened to them and trying to make some sense of things.

And boy, did things not make much sense.

Are Europeans checking this board? Since it went Dark, can someone verify if all of England incinerated, or just London? Thx for any info.

Just London? I stared in stunned silence at those words and let out a choked breath. I don’t know what I’d expected, but I wasn’t sure I could handle this.

Anybody heard news W of Denver? Updates apprec.

Fires coming from the west as far as Mississippi R. and flooding still seeping from the east. We’re heading north to Ohio.

“From what we got on the island, I expected the flooding.” Fang looked up at me, his thick brows knitting together. “But what do you think is causing the fires? Was it from another natural disaster — more meteors or volcanoes — or something man-made? Something planned?”

I shook my head uncertainly. “Look at this one. ‘Whole fam got sick. I’m the only 1 left.’ Do you think that’s the virus my mom told us about — the bioweapon?”

Nudge clicked the link to see the responses.

Make sure you protect yourself. H-men sweeping populated areas now. Especially west coast usa.

Are H-men Erasers? My mom said they’re same as Doomsday cult, but I thought the flock got rid of those guys.

“What!” I jumped up and jabbed my finger at the screen, disbelieving. “If I have to deal with feral robotic man-wolves along with the dissolution of civilization, I am seriously going to lose it.”

We had almost scrolled all the way down to the bottom, and we weren’t any closer to the answers. The last comment was by PAtunnelratt, and all it said was We miss you guys.

It was from four minutes ago.

“Do you see that?” I jerked forward.

“I told you!” Gazzy’s eyes lit up. “Quick, Nudge, write them back!”

FangMod: @PAtunnelratt, it’s the flock. Are you still there?

“Ugh, this connection is so slow!” Nudge groaned as she hit Refresh over and over again.

Fang shrugged. “Well, the world has ended.”

Finally, it showed one reply, and we all crowded in closer to read it over Nudge’s shoulder.

PAtunnelratt: Awww yeahhh. FLOCK 4EVER!! I knew if anybody could survive it was U guys.

FangMod: Where are you?

PAtunnelratt: West Penn. In the mountains. Ppl thought Dad was nutz to buy underground silo. Sometimes impulse buys work out I guess. Ha-ha.

“Ask him about Erasers,” I said.

“And Cryenas!” Gazzy added.

“Oh my God, now it’s frozen,” Nudge groaned. “This always happens.”

“Sorry!” Fang said dryly. “Next time I miraculously find a working computer in the middle of freaking nowhere, I’ll try to make it speedier.”

FangMod: Tunnelratt, are there any other people in your area?

It finally went through, but Tunnelratt wasn’t responding.

“We have less than three percent battery left,” Nudge said nervously. She fired off another message.

FangMod: Have you heard anything about Erasers?

PAtunnelratt: No. but I heard of the Remedy.

“What is the Remedy?” Nudge typed lightning fast into the white box.

But the screen was already fading to gray as the tablet powered down.

13

Seven thousand miles due north, twenty stories underground, in a New World city known as Himmel...

The young man had left the lab without any instructions. All he had was a folded slip of paper with an address. This address. He made a fist with one gloved hand, the leather squeaking, and reached up to knock.

The door opened silently and a colorless servant with downcast eyes gestured him into a grand ballroom. A plain black office chair was the sole piece of furniture in the enormous room, and the white-haired man in a crisp lab coat was the only person.

“A10103!” the man shouted in greeting, his voice echoing around the chamber.

The young man stood in the doorway, unsure what was expected of him. He clasped his hands in front of him and awaited instruction.

The white-haired man in the white coat stood and circled him for several minutes, measuring his height, his biceps, his feet, shining a light into his eyes to check his pupil reflexes. The servant had silently reappeared and wrote down everything the older man muttered.

A10103 stood tall and straight, and when the older man occasionally met his eyes, A10103 made sure to gaze back evenly.

Finally, seemingly satisfied, the older man looked up at the tall, handsome youth standing before him and reached a delicate hand forward. “I’m your designer. You may hear people here refer to me as the Remedy...” His face split into a garish smile that was all shiny pink gums. “But I’m really just a doctor, trying to mend things in my way. I apologize for the formalities, but we’ve had... violations of code in the past. You never can be too careful.” He sighed. “How are you feeling?”

“Quite well, Doctor. Strong.”

“Wonderful! And how do you like my... parlor?” The doctor gestured.

A10103 gazed up at the ceiling hundreds of feet high, decorated with gold leaf and intricately painted frescoes. He nodded appreciatively.

The doctor sank back into his office chair. “It’s a bit indulgent, perhaps, but I do so value my space, and for the next few years anyway, I’m afraid I won’t be able to spend much time aboveground.” He sighed deeply. “See how frail we humans are? Worthless creatures, really, so slow to adapt. I swear, I’d take my own life for the good of evolution, but someone needs to get things back on track.”

A10103 smiled.

“And speaking of getting things back on track, I have a mission for you, my child. I believe you are familiar with the background of Maximum Ride and her so-called flock?”

A10103 nodded, and the doctor raised his eyebrows expectantly at his pupil.

“Six youths...” A10103 began. “Ranging in ages from seven to fifteen and possessing a number of advantageous gifts. Raised in a lab as the fifty-fourth generation of genetically mutated animal-human hybrids, and only the second hybrid form to be viable. With avian-human genetic material—”

“Human-avian,” the doctor corrected. “They’re only two percent avian — mostly human.” He looked disgusted. “Those initial models were full of amateur mistakes. You understand the grave risk this flock poses, don’t you?”

A10103 hesitated. “Should they... breed... you mean?” he asked.

“Indeed.” The doctor shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “For a time we believed they’d be useful, but now that there are over a thousand mutants working out there in this new world, beautiful children like yourself, all scientifically evolved, we see the truth: Those specimens are a virus.” The man known as the Remedy slammed his fist into his palm, his face flushing. “And I’m a doctor, first and foremost,” he sniffed, calming himself. “I’ve worked tirelessly all my life to heal our sick earth, and with the advances being made in our species, my dream is at last coming to fruition. But in order for our endeavor to succeed, the virus cannot be permitted to spread.”

A10103 nodded intelligently. “They must be eliminated.”

“Your genetic makeup was altered for just such a highly specialized role. You are one of a group of carefully selected individuals, my horsemen in this last race to achieve paradise, you might say.”

“Like in the Bible.”

The doctor looked at him disconcertedly. “Excuse me?”

“The four horsemen of the apocalypse,” A10103 explained innocently.

“Yes, exactly.” The man cocked his head. “My, you’re a regular encyclopedia, aren’t you?”

A10103 tapped his temple and smiled. “The new upload.”

“I’ll have to be careful, or soon my little gadgets will be smarter than I am.” His creator’s lips curved into a thin, tight smile, and A10103 cast his eyes down.

“As the first Horseman, you’ll have the most important role, but there are other Horsemen as well, of course. One must always have backups.” He chuckled softly. “As you can imagine, I have a very difficult task, keeping all my little projects in check, and this is one I’d so like to cross off my list. Despite their genetic disadvantages, Maximum Ride and her flock have always been rather... slippery, so don’t fret if you find it difficult to complete your task.”

“It won’t be a problem, Doctor,” A10103 assured him.

“Yes, well, I know it can be a terrible burden to track them all down, so if you should fail...” His mentor met his gaze and flashed that wide, gummy grin of his. “It would be my pleasure to send the next Horseman along after you.”

“It won’t be a problem.”

14

A10103 WALKED QUICKLY through the city, searching for the address of his next appointment. There was no wind ruffling his hair, no cars clogging the road. The air held at a steady temperature, and the streets were spotless. With each step he took, the skyscrapers rose up around him. The sun shone, the sky was blue, and the smooth, sleek towers were gleaming symbols of money and power.

Or so you could convince yourself for a while.

They were all just holographs, he knew — changing images of London, Singapore, or sometimes Vienna, projected on the walls of the winding tunnels. A10103 tried to pinpoint the seams in the images as the light shifted around him, but he had to admit, they were pretty convincing.

If it weren’t for the sour taste of canned air on his tongue, he might almost believe he was outside.

A10103 at last located his destination and stepped into a cold metal cone, pressing the number written on the slip the doctor had given him.

“Generating relaxing dreamscape,” a soothing female voice informed him from the speakers. Moments later, the doors reopened onto a pillowed paradise.

He entered and sank into the soft luxury of silk and down, and gazed up at the 3-D experience in wonder. Brilliant green leaves unfurled around his head, giant flowers hung low from their stems, and the illusion of sun filtered onto his face. And though he couldn’t feel any heat from the sun’s rays, he could imagine well enough.

Just like he could imagine really being with the girl leaning over him.

She was beautiful, but doll-like, almost like an anime character brought to life. Her chin came to a delicate point, and her lips pursed in a small, perfect bow. Thick locks of brilliant red hair cascaded over her shoulders and huge, jeweled eyes gazed at him tenderly.

A10103 almost screamed when she touched him.

He’d thought she was a hologram, along with the rest of the space. But no, she was real — a real girl tracing her soft fingertips along his jaw. He doubted she was completely human, but she was definitely real.

“What’s your name?” he asked her, sitting up. He wasn’t really familiar with these types of situations, but that seemed like something you should ask.

She smiled. “What do you wish my name to be?”

He smiled uncertainly, unsure whether she was trying to please him or she really hadn’t been given a name, like him. “A10103” was branded on him, but he needed something more personal, at least for himself.

“I’m Horseman,” he offered. That would do for the time being — remind him he was a man with a mission, and a rather dark one at that.

She lay next to him on the pillow and gazed at him through long, curling lashes. “I love you, Horseman,” she sighed in a voice so sweet it was cloying.

“What?” Horseman laughed uncomfortably and tried to sit up on the impossibly fluffy pillows. “You seem nice and everything, but we just met.”

“How can that matter?” She threaded her hands through his. “We are the children of the future. Created for one another. I adore you. You adore me, don’t you?” She cocked her head like some exotic bird, studying him in puzzlement.

He understood then. This living doll was a gift from the Remedy, a bonus for his services. She was someone who would love him without question, which was all he’d really ever wanted.

So he’d thought.

Horseman felt an overwhelming empathy for her then, a sadness at the uselessness of her existence, and a deep, gnawing guilt. Because this girl, or whatever she was, had been created just for him. Yet he knew beyond certainty that he would never love her back.

And right now, she was compromising his mission.

“I have to go.” Horseman sprang out of the pillows and stood up, backing away from her. “I’m sorry. If I make it back from my job, I swear I’ll try to fix this.”

Her poised, painted face frowned as the metal door opened and the projection faded back into the freight elevator it had been.

“Come back, my love. I can help you find what you need. Just come back...”

15

Horseman stumbled along the streets, desperate to get through the winding labyrinth of tunnels, eager to start his mission. He dragged his hand against the tunnel wall and watched the colors project onto his clothing. The projections seemed less charming when you’d seen what was behind the mirage, and the canned air was starting to make him gag.

He knew too much — he understood that. Felt too much. Or more than he was meant to, at least. There was some glitch in him, like with the flock, and that was dangerous. He worried it was starting to become a liability.

The guards posted at every checkpoint resembled heavily armored tanks shaped like men, and their eyes followed him from behind their goggled masks. Horseman knew his movements looked erratic, and he tried to slow his pace, to look professional.

Not that he felt any fear.

Inside the smooth leather of his gloves, he stretched his fingers — his only weapon. Because the Remedy trusted him to get the job done. Not like these goons with their heavy artillery. He had been crafted to be superior, after all.

So what was he waiting for?

He ran past the stern-faced guards, but before they could even yell “Ostanovis!” Horseman snapped open his wings — giant, powerful things that he controlled as dexterously as his fingers — shot up into the fake skyscrapers, and burst through the ceiling vent.

By the time he heard the rapid powpowpow of their AK-47s, Horseman was soaring over land that lacked the rubble of destroyed civilization but was still tainted by layers of the ever-present ash and covered by a dense, acrid blanket of toxic air. His embedded GPS sensors told him he was in a remote part of Russia.

There was nothing on earth like flying. Horseman reveled in the bite of the cold air in his lungs — even if it happened to be sulfurous — and loved zipping fast enough to make his eyes water — even if the ash caused a stinging pain. You couldn’t do this in the tunnels, that was for sure.

He wondered what other things had been programmed in the later generations. He had more wing power, sure, better vision. He had been made stronger, bigger, and his tracking skills rivaled those of any bird of prey.

But was his smile his own? Was his joy? Did everyone feel this... utter elation when they were in the air? Did the flock? They did, he was sure.

One more thing he was fairly sure about: He hadn’t been programmed to ask these kinds of questions, which was why he’d do well to keep his mouth shut.

In fact, he’d better study up on what exactly was expected of the first Horseman if he was going to be successful on this mission. The information appeared behind his eyes as if on a screen — images of art and scholarly assessments feeding into his thoughts — and the Horseman couldn’t help grinning as he got to the interpretations.

He thought of the brooding doctor, his creator. Had his master understood the multiple meanings when he’d named A10103 his first Horseman? Did he know that the white horse could stand for both righteousness and evil?

It was going to be fun finding out.

16

You’d think discovering there were other people alive out there would leave us hopeful, revitalized, and closer than ever, right? Well, then you wouldn’t be taking into account what happens when a bunch of raging egos try to make decisions. Instead, it led to the worst knock-down, drag-out argument the flock had ever had.

“So, I guess we go to Pennsylvania first,” Iggy said. We were rummaging through the claustrophobic little cabin, taking stock of the supplies. “From what that Tunnelratt kid said, it sounds like there are more survivors there.”

“The survivors aren’t the issue,” Fang said. He was still holding the tablet, trying to get the thing turned back on. “The killers are. Why not try to find these H-men dudes first? Find out if they’re just random bots, or connected to something bigger.” He was all action, which was how I usually operated, too. “I think we should head to the coasts and—”

“We’re going to Russia,” Angel said out of the blue. She pulled her head out of a lower cupboard she had cleared out, and now sat among some rusted, battered pots and pans that wouldn’t even be of use to whack someone with.

“That’s stupid.” Gazzy dismissed his little sister as he stood on a chair to reach the upper shelf of a closet. “Ooh, tea tree oil. Gotta be flammable. Why would we go to Russia? You saw those comments. People said all of Europe might be wrecked.”

“It isn’t,” Angel said authoritatively. “And if you want to know the truth about what happened, you’ll follow me.”

“Let me guess. ‘I’m the big-shot psychic and I know everything.’ ” Gazzy mimicked Angel’s voice perfectly, and Nudge giggled, then winced in pain. “Okay, Ange, don’t hold out on us. Go on, tell us what mysterious future awaits us in Russia.” He wiggled his fingers and made his eyebrows jump.

Gazzy had always been protective of Angel, but clearly some tension had been building between them. Angel was definitely not smiling. She crossed her arms over her chest but didn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought.” Gazzy snickered as he jumped off the chair with his find.

She stared at him evenly. “I know it’s hard when some of us are developing even more extraordinary powers and you’re still trying to control your hilarious toxic farts, but don’t you think you should grow up, Gasman?”

Gazzy looked at Angel in surprise. They were standing toe to toe now, blue-eyed mirrors of each other, and I was getting a little nervous — a threatened Angel is an unpredictable Angel. I looked at Iggy. He’d always been so good at neutralizing tension, but his jaw was set tight as he let it build and build.

“I’m the one who needs to grow up?” Gazzy said. His cheeks were flushed with anger. “First you were just loooving being Max’s precious little baby, and now you pull this ‘I’m the Chosen One’ crap every time you don’t get your way.”

“I know what I’m talking about!” Angel stamped her foot.

“Oh, are we going to have a tantrum now?” Gazzy taunted.

“Okayyy,” I said, and blew out a frustrated breath. “Let’s just all take a step back here. Ange, honey, I know you haven’t been sleeping. Maybe you just need some rest.”

“We’re all going to Russia!” Angel shouted.

“I’m going to the US!” her brother raged back.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Nudge said. “Whatever’s out there...” She glanced toward the door and touched a hand to her cheek, where the blood had soaked through the cloth again. “It’s not any better than where we were.”

“We don’t know that, Nudge,” Fang said. “If we catch these guys, things might get a lot better.”

“Maybe Nudge is right,” I said. “Maybe we should go back to the island for a while.”

“What?” Fang jerked his head around.

“What?!” Gazzy repeated.

Fang took me aside, keeping his voice low. “Max, how can you say that, especially now that we have a clue about what happened? You don’t think we owe it to those people to help them?”

I shifted uncomfortably. There is no purer form of humiliation than when someone you love and respect suggests you might be a self-involved jerk.

“Of course I want to help people,” I said quietly. “But we know there are people sick in Asia, too, and that’s a lot closer. And we know Pierpont stocked the vaccine in the caves on our island. Maybe we should try to find a way in again.”

Fang sighed and looked away.

I touched his arm. “I just think we need to figure things out before we make any crazy decisions.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Total said.

“Yeah, because the decisions she’s made have always been spot-on, right?” Iggy muttered.

I narrowed my eyes. “What’s that supposed to—”

“It means that maybe if you hadn’t insisted we stay on the island after the apocalypse, Dylan and Akila might still be here.”

“Watch it, Ig,” Fang warned.

But the words already hung between us like bullets aimed at my heart. I knew they were true.

“I...” I was remembering the bloodied sheet in the grave and thinking of the green sneaker as it had slipped out of my fingers. I couldn’t breathe.

“It was the best thing for us then,” Fang insisted. “We were protected. We didn’t know what else was out there.”

There were other things, too, deeper reasons I hadn’t left the island — things I couldn’t say aloud. When you fail at saving the world, it’s difficult to imagine facing the ruins of what’s left. When you blame yourself so completely, it’s hard to look for who might be responsible. And when someone claims your mom and sister are dead, it’s almost impossible to believe it without proof.

I know you were grieving, the voice said inside my head. I know you couldn’t accept the loss. But you stopped making decisions for the flock. You put us all at risk.

I glared at Angel. “Get out of my mind.”

“They’re dead, Max,” Angel said gently.

“We don’t know that!” My hands clenched as I struggled to hold on to that belief. “Dylan could still be there. My mom might be alive. Ella might—”

“They’re gone!” Iggy shouted, and for the first time I saw the real anguish he felt at losing my half sister, the girl he’d totally fallen for. “Why can’t you just accept that, Max, so we can all move on?”

Because. I can’t. I won’t.

He nodded toward where Angel and Gazzy stood. “I’m going.”

“Okay then.” Angel clasped her hands together as everyone glared at one another. “We’ll head out in the morning. Max and Nudge can stay behind and the rest of us will go.”

“Except me.” Fang stepped closer to me and threaded his hand behind my back. “I’m staying with Max.”

17

Angel’s eyes widened. “That’s not allowed.”

“What?” I said, still reeling from Iggy’s attack. “You mean because the flock isn’t supposed to ever break up again?”

“No, not because of that,” Angel said, and grabbed Fang’s arm. “I said he has to leave. Every second you stay here, you’re a bigger threat to the world’s survival.”

Fang shook his head. “I love you, Ange, and I get that you’re still sore about this Save the World crusade. But news flash: We lost.” He kicked a warped can across the room, and the clang echoed in the small space. “The world already ended, and I sure didn’t have anything to do with it.”

I felt a pang. Fang could separate himself from it — no one had told him he could stop it — but my conscience still said my fault, my fault, my fault.

“You’re a threat to Max, too,” Angel continued in her patient parent voice. “We each have a role. I’m supposed to lead...”

“And I’m supposed to die, right?” I felt how tense Fang was next to me, how the air itself seemed to pulse. “Are we back to this again?”

Angel shrugged her slight shoulders, but her gaze never wavered. “You can’t continue being selfish, Fang,” she said, and his eyes hardened.

“Angel, come on,” I cut in. “I think we’ve all had enough right now.”

But Fang held up his hand. “No, it’s fine. Doesn’t faze me anymore. She’s been saying this for, what, two years? At first it was kind of spooky, but at this point, she’s just the girl who cried wolf. And as for her leading...” He stared down at her, meeting her eyes with a look of pity. “That only seems to happen when you weasel your way into people’s heads and make their decisions for them, doesn’t it, sweetie? No one wants to follow you, Angel.”

He let that hang in the air for a second. Angel glanced at Gazzy, and her brother wouldn’t meet her eyes.

Angel’s nostrils flared, but she held her composure. “I know you can’t understand. I’ve had to make sacrifices. To spare you all the burden—”

“Sacrifices.” Fang nodded, pursing his lips. “Seeing the future and doing nothing. Not a word until the freaking sky actually caught on fire. Sacrificing all those innocent lives. You’re a real martyr, aren’t you?”

“You think I want this?” she shrieked, her eyes brimming with tears. “I tried to warn you. I tried to prepare you. But I guess I’ll have to show you!”

Her eyes turned a milky white, and I sucked in a breath. We all looked alarmed as Fang’s expression started to change. He stared straight ahead at Angel, but it was like he was watching a movie. I saw the sweat pricking above his lip, the color draining from his face.

Suddenly the pressure changed in the room, pressing agonizingly in on my skull, making my eardrums pop. Fang’s nose started to bleed. Nudge, Iggy, and Gazzy each sank to their knees, holding their heads and moaning.

“Angel, stop it now! That’s enough!” I shouted.

Fang jerked his head sharply from side to side, winced painfully, and then collapsed.

I sank to my knees next to him, pinching his nose to stop the blood. He didn’t seem to see me. His eyes were haunted, and he was muttering. When I took his hand in mine, I felt it trembling.

“What did you do?” I demanded. “What did you do to him?”

When I looked up at Angel, her white wings seemed to fill the room, and despite her young face, her expression seemed as old as time. She wasn’t a little kid at all. Maybe she never had been.

“I showed him the truth,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Fang, but you can’t change it. It’s your fate.”

18

“Fang!” I shouted, trudging along the path he’d cut through the high brown grass sloping up behind the cottage. “Fang, answer me!”

I found him farther up the hill in a clearing hidden by brambles and dead-looking eucalyptus. He held a thick branch with both hands like a baseball bat and was hitting one of the trees again and again.

I leaned against another tree, studying him. His expression was as unreadable as ever, but his flushed skin suggested the fury boiling just beneath the surface. “Are you really going to let Angel do this to you?” I said after a few seconds.

In response, Fang continued swinging. Strips of bleached bark fluttered to the ground each time he connected with the tree, the CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! echoing against the hollow trunk. When his makeshift club broke in half, Fang’s face went as still and closed as marble.

“Hey!” I protested as he started smashing what was left of the stick against the ground. I grabbed his arms from behind, pulling against the momentum of straining muscles. “Come on, stop it.”

He finally chucked the stick and whirled around. “Angel’s right,” he choked. His eyes were haunted, his pupils still dilated. “I’m a danger to you and everyone. It’s the reason I left before, and I never should have come back.”

“What?” I said, gaping at him in disbelief. “What on earth did Angel tell you?”

Angrily he shook his head.

“Fang, this is me! We can tell each other everything!” Can’t we?

I waited and after a full minute realized he wasn’t going to tell me. He actually was not going to let me know what Angel had showed him. I gave him another minute to apologize and realize what a douchebag he was being.

“She’s right,” he repeated instead. “I can’t be a coward. I can’t put everyone I care about at risk.”

Underneath the distress on his face, I saw the rational, calculating Fang I’d always known, and that’s when I started to get scared.

He was serious.

“So, what?” I said scathingly, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “You’re just going to run? You think that’s less cowardly?”

“Not run.” Fang’s jaw was set with conviction. “I’m going to do whatever I can with the time I have left to figure out what happened, to find out who’s responsible, to stop this thing. I’ll go to California, find some of those cleanup crews...”

“You mean you’ll go to California to meet up with BikiniBimbo456, or whatever her name was,” I spat.

It was petty, I admit, but give me a pass, okay? I was feeling pretty bitter at that moment.

“You know that’s not it.” He walked over to me and tried to take my hands. When I crossed my arms, he settled for lifting my chin so I was forced to look at him. “You know you’re it for me. The only one. The forever one.”

I wasn’t willing to budge yet, though those were the most amazing words I’d ever heard from him. “Am I?”

Fang sighed. “Maximum Ride, you’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, and sometimes it seems like your sole purpose in life is to make mine harder, but I swear, I love you more than I thought I could love anyone or anything.”

“Then stay,” I whispered, clenching my eyes shut just as they started to well up.

I felt Fang’s hands on the sides of my face, his thumbs wiping away my tears. I felt the heat coming off his body, heard the catch of his breath. And when our lips finally came together, our kisses were urgent, our bodies hungry. As he moved his hands through my tangled hair, I looked up at him. Inhaled. And said, “Yes.”

We sank to the ground, the dried leaves crinkling under us, and time fell away for a while.

I couldn’t tell if our voices rose in pleasure or pain, couldn’t tell if my heart was breaking or bursting open with joy. I only knew I didn’t want to pull away from him for a single second, and it was only when we both gasped for a breath that I realized Fang’s eyes were squeezed shut and his lashes were wet.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely. It was the most vulnerable I’d ever seen him.

“It’s okay.” I pulled him closer, cradling his head tenderly. When he kissed me again, I tasted the salt on his lips, but I still found it sweet. “It’s going to be all right.”

19

Fang awoke with a start, shivering violently. His shirt was soaked with sweat, clammy against his skin, but the air had grown chillier overnight, and the ground beneath him felt like a block of ice.

He stared out between the brambles at the ash covering the hills like a strange dark snowfall — quiet and eerily beautiful. He concentrated on slowing his breath, trying to shake the vision that had echoed in his dreams, waking him up every hour.

Angel had put it there, playing on a loop, and the fall was like a punch to the gut each time. It was cruel, but he understood why she had done it: He never would have left Max otherwise.

Not ever.

Fang felt her next to him on the bed of dried leaves, and was so relieved in that moment that his breath left his chest in a long, aching sigh. His body curled around Max in a spoon, the way they slept every night. In sleep, her mouth was open like she was about to say something — to ask him again not to go — and he wanted so badly to tighten his arms around her, to kiss her chapped lips one more time.

That longing was the sharpest, most acute pain he’d ever felt, and he had to bite his tongue until it bled to keep himself in check — he could not wake her.

Instead, Fang wound a strand of Max’s tangled hair around his fingers, breathing it in, saying good-bye. But it didn’t smell like Max anymore. It, like everything else in his world, smelled like ash.

Carefully he rolled away from her, picked his way through the brambles, and crept past the sleeping house, as silent as only he knew how to be.

He wasn’t sure if dawn had broken or not — ash blotted out the sun. Fang spread out his large black wings to their full span. He stretched the muscles, felt the power there. How could they fail him? He wasn’t sure — Angel hadn’t shown him that part.

So this was what it felt like. To be told you had terminal cancer. To be given a death sentence by a stone-faced judge. To know the plane was going down.

He couldn’t see his life as it had been, or the things he still needed to do. All he could focus on was that ground, coming up to meet him. Fast.

Fang doubled over as the vomit rose in his throat.

He staggered to a puddle of water, and his reflection shook him even more. His olive skin was ashen, his cheekbones sharper than ever. Fang had always excelled at being a shadow. Was he now becoming a ghost?

His hand smashed through the image as he splashed the polluted water on his face. Then he stood up and kicked ash over his vomit, disgusted with himself. The awful canned pasta they’d found in the cabin had been the best meal he’d had in weeks, and he couldn’t even keep it down.

Fang ran his fingers through his mop of wet hair and blew out a long breath. He was better than this. He had to be. He had to accept certain things as fact, now.

If he loved Max, he had to let her go.

He was going to die.

Okay.

Fang wasn’t going to cower from it — that wasn’t his style — but he wasn’t just going to wait for death, either. Instead of trying to shake the vision Angel had shown him, he began to focus on understanding it.

“This is your fate.”

In his mind’s eye, he saw the flakes gathering in his hair. He could feel them on his face, melting on his eyelashes. It wasn’t ash, like he’d first thought; it was snow. Angel hadn’t told him when this horrible thing would happen, but it was close to the end of May now, which meant winter was over in the Northern Hemisphere, where he was headed.

Maybe he had another year to live. Maybe he had several. Maybe he even had enough time to catch this Remedy maniac.

He’d start with the H-men, like his gut had first told him to. He’d start with California.

20

Fang felt the heaviness in his body as he flew away from the cabin and tried to focus on his breathing. It was impossible to shake the sense that each wing stroke carried him closer to his end, but he was determined to hold back his panic.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Keep going.

But when he inhaled deeply, he smelled something strange. The air carried smoke from the ash cloud and salt from the distant ocean, but there was something else, too — something sour and stinking.

Like death itself.

Fang dropped low over leafless trees and abandoned houses, scanning the valley for what he expected would be another mass grave.

Instead of the stillness of death, though, he detected movement. Even from above, he instantly recognized the hulking backs and long, thick necks hanging low.

Cryenas.

And they were swarming toward the small cabin he’d just left.

Fang wrenched his right wing downward sharply, starting to make a U-turn to warn the flock, but then paused. He hovered over the slinking shapes, considering.

Two, four... only ten of them. Fang chuckled darkly. Ten to one wasn’t exactly stellar odds, but he would deal with these monsters himself. It would be his parting gift to the flock.

After all, it wasn’t like the Cryenas were going to kill him. Not unless Angel was very wrong.

Fang brought his knees to his chest and then kicked sharply up at the sky, surrendering to his bird instincts. His wings folded tight against his back, his hands cut downward as he gained speed, and he zeroed in on his prey with calm precision as the ground rushed toward him.

The second before he smashed into the earth, Fang pulled up his head and grinned. “Gotcha.”

With all the momentum of his dive, he plowed into the leader of the pack, sending it knocking into the other Cryenas like a perfectly spun bowling ball.

It was almost cartoonish the way the stunned creatures were flung outward on impact, and Fang might’ve laughed, but he was pinned under one of them, and his mouth was full of dirt.

Fang reached his arms around the Cryena that was crushing him. The hairless skin moved over powerful muscles as the animal squirmed in his grasp, and Fang was disgusted to feel rough, scabby sores beneath his fingers. He hurled the creature off him and jumped to his feet.

The other Cryenas were already moving in on him now. Their tongues hung out of their mouths, already salivating as they started to circle him, herding him. Up close, the foul smell was overwhelming.

“You guys reek.” Fang hid his nose in the crook of his arm.

These Cryenas were in much rougher shape than the ones they’d seen in Sydney. Some of their spots seemed to be actually melting off, and their skin looked thin and grayish, almost as if they were rotting from the inside out.

Fang knew he’d have a much better shot striking from above, so he shook out his wings and leaped into the air, taunting his pursuers as he zigzagged just above their heads. They loped around him, trotting closer and moving away.

“Come on, you cowards!”

Each time he struck one on its humped back or flat head, four more would hurl themselves at him, nipping at him and whining as Fang rose again.

Blood was seeping from a dozen bites on his legs, but there was freedom in the pain. It meant he was still alive, still feeling, and he felt invincible.

Whatever they did to him, however hard they fought, in the end, he would win.

Then one jumped higher than the rest, and Fang stifled a scream as the skin on his left forearm was torn away. The pain was shocking, stunning, and as Fang dipped for just a moment, they pulled him down.

Their target felled, pack mentality kicked in, and the Cryenas swarmed all at once. Claws dug at his chest, teeth sank into his shoulder, and wet muzzles nuzzled in, ready to feast on his insides. The weight of all the bodies pushed in and in and in on him, and Fang would have gagged from the smell if his chest wasn’t being crushed.

You will not die today, Fang repeated to himself. Angel showed you where you would die, and it’s far from here. A world away from Max.

A tense grunt escaped him at the thought, and all the hurt and frustration and bitterness he felt rushed to the surface. Just knowing his fate was more painful than the most gruesome death he could imagine.

Maybe he should let these monsters just kill him now.

But then a strange light caught Fang’s eye — something slowly blinking green behind one of the Cryena’s ears. Frowning, Fang let his eyes trail to the scabs he felt at its sides.

And in the place where the tawny skin had torn, Fang saw the dull shine of metal poking through. And he understood: They were robots.

Someone sent them here. Someone is tracking the flock.

21

Fang let out a violent roar of fury.

After all they had been through the last few months — tsunamis, volcanoes, and living on the edge of starvation — they were still being hunted.

So Fang reacted like a hunted animal, one that had been cornered and threatened and beaten down too many times, an animal that just needed a way out.

He went completely ballistic.

He seized the head of the biggest beast, wrenching it toward him. Other Cryenas scrambled away, but many jaws still lunged at him, refusing to abandon their meal.

Fang’s fingernails tore at spotted flesh, his arms found strength to break bones, a couple of well-placed kicks cracked their thick necks sideways, and his teeth gnashed at anything that would bleed. Fang had finally snapped, and he would not back down.

It was only when he paused for a few ragged breaths that he saw that most of the Cryenas were dead or had run away, and he had torn the pack leader almost completely apart.

Fang toed the body cautiously. It was clearly dead, but a high frenzied howl was coming from the fallen Cryena.

Fang grimaced as he peeled back synthetic skin that clearly hadn’t been made for these harsh elements. Real animal or not, dissecting this creature that had been clawing hungrily at him moments before felt grotesque.

But Fang needed every puzzle piece he could find that would lead him toward justice. He didn’t have time for squeamishness. He had to know.

The Cryena’s insides were a complex labyrinth of lab-grown bones and tendons, with added wires, sensors, and metal upgrades. It wasn’t like anything he had seen before — even the Flyboys had been more mechanical and better designed.

The creature’s howl went on and on. It seemed to echo his own anguish, and Fang wanted more than anything to make it stop.

He’d learned all he could here, so he used a rock to crush the robotic skull. The green light stopped blinking as the scene finally settled into silence.

There would be more Cryenas, he was pretty certain of that. Worse things, too, probably. But not yet. Not today.

He had given the flock a parting gift, given them the thing he himself wanted most in the world: a little more time.

Fang gazed up toward the cottage. He saw the shadowy outline of Total’s solid little body, his tail wagging.

The Scottie dog barked, and Fang raised a hand in farewell.

22

I felt the cold at my back when I woke, and sensed the emptiness there even before I turned.

Fang was gone.

Footprints in the film of ash led away from our secluded spot. Away from me.

I flung myself up, stumbling between the eucalyptus trees. I got tangled in the grasses and whacked my shin on a low stump, but I finally made it back to the house.

“Fang?” I couldn’t help calling, but I knew it was pointless.

The front door banged on its hinges as I burst inside, tracking ash behind me. Iggy and Gazzy turned from where they knelt next to the coffee table.

“Is Fang here?” I asked.

“Haven’t seen him,” the Gasman said.

He couldn’t have left. He would’ve told me, right? He couldn’t be gone gone. Especially when Iggy and Gazzy didn’t even seem to care.

My gaze traveled to the coffee table, where they had their backpacks and their various bits and pieces of explosives and weapons spread out.

“What are you...” I started to ask, but then I understood: They don’t care if Fang’s gone because they’re getting ready to leave, too. For real.

I’d thought we’d talk over the fight in the morning, make up and tease one another — like the old days. But their tense shoulders and distant expressions said otherwise.

Uh-uh, my denial-loving brain insisted. This is not happening!

I picked up a couch cushion and threw it at the table like a Frisbee. Bottles and fuses went tumbling every which way.

“You guys are idiots!” I glowered at the boys. “You’re really going to just leave? What about our promise to stick together?”

Gazzy stared at the stained carpet guiltily. “What other choice do we have?”

“Just... trust the flock.” I pounded my fist into my palm. Part of me was imagining Fang’s face there. “Trust that we can do this together, like we always have. Is that so hard?”

“Trust the flock? Or you?” Iggy asked.

“We just want answers, Max,” Gazzy said. “And that doesn’t really seem like a priority for you.”

Iggy stood up. “We want to learn who’s still alive, but you’re too worried about who’s dead.”

Like my mom. I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I stormed out of the cabin, hoping to see Fang soaring back toward us, like he’d just gone out for a morning zip around the block. But no... things don’t work the way they used to in the pre-apocalyptic world. No Hollywood endings here.

I spotted Nudge and Total in the garden over by Akila’s grave. “Has anyone seen Fang?” I called out.

Nudge shook her head miserably. She looked like she’d been crying all night.

Iggy and Gazzy came out of the cabin wearing their backpacks.

“You’re really going, then?” I said angrily as they strode past. “That’s it?”

“Maybe you should start trusting us for a change,” Iggy said. “You ready, Gasman?”

Gazzy glanced up at the roof. Angel was balancing on top of the lightning rod, swaying with the wind. She didn’t make a move to come down.

“Let’s see if America is still the land of the free.” Gazzy arranged the pack straps on his shoulders, and both he and Iggy snapped open their wings.

Nudge walked over to join me. As we watched the boys take off, I shoved clenched fists deep into my pockets. Silent tears ran down Nudge’s face, and when Total put his paws against her legs, she bent down and held him tight.

Before I could even process the fact that I might never again see these kids I’d known since they were hatchlings, Total pulled away from Nudge and touched my hand with his wet nose.

“Fang left at dawn,” he said quietly. “I think he wanted me to tell you.”

“He—” I squeaked, but the words felt strangled in my throat. After... last night? I thought that had cemented things between us. Now it looked like it had done the opposite.

I’d known the truth, deep in my bones, even if I hadn’t wanted to believe it at first. Now it was real, verified: He wasn’t coming back, despite everything. Despite me. He was gone gone. Total’s sad eyes confirmed it.

Fang really was gone.

Forever.

23

I started to hyperventilate.

“You know that boy adores you, Max,” Total said.

“Stop it,” I said, covering my ears and squeezing my eyes shut tight.

Tears threatened to overflow, but I couldn’t give in to them, not yet. I was too furious — at Iggy and Gazzy for leaving, at Fang for not even bothering to say good-bye, at Angel for starting this whole thing.

I stomped across the yard and glared up at our little towheaded mystic. Angel was crouched like a gargoyle, her lips pursed into a pout.

“Are you happy with yourself?” I snarled. “We could’ve figured out a plan. A place to go together. Instead, you broke up the whole flock!”

She looked down at me sadly, unblinkingly, for a long time. Finally, she stepped off the lightning rod and fluttered down to the ground. “I should get going, too,” she said.

With those words, the reality finally hit home: I was going to lose her — again. As hard as I’d tried to keep us together through the years, she was leaving, along with everyone else — my mom, Ella, Dylan, Akila, Fang, Gazzy, Iggy...

The anger disappeared, and I reached out and clutched her to me in a fierce hug. What else could I do?

“Please,” I whispered. “You can’t go.”

Angel wrapped her arms around my neck and I pressed my face into her ashy, once-fluffy locks, remembering how I use to smooth her hair from her face when she was little, how I’d promised I would protect her. I imagined Angel out in that awful new world alone, without her flock. Without me.

I’m not your baby anymore, Max, her voice said in my head. I never really was.

She wriggled out of my grasp and turned to Nudge and Total. “Take care of each other, okay?”

Nudge nodded and hugged her tearfully, and Total licked her face, leaving odd clean streaks. Angel unfurled her wings, her primary feathers still tipped with crud from the ash and rain. But before she took off, she turned back to me.

“One day you’ll understand,” she said, her face an infuriating picture of Zen confidence. “You might even thank me.”

“I seriously doubt that,” I muttered.

I guess we can’t all be enlightened. Angel grinned. See you in Russia.

Moments later, I watched the little kid I’d raised and loved and butted heads with fly away from me. I watched her curls bouncing as she pushed off, waiting to see if she’d turn her head again, but she never did.

Instead, Angel’s white wings rose through the ash, and soon she was a speck I couldn’t tell apart from the rest of the sky.

24

I stood next to the mound where we’d buried Akila, staring up at the churning sky and biting hard on the insides of my cheeks as I tried to keep from screaming.

They’ve left. They’ve really left.

Sure, we’d had our ups and downs. The boys had splintered off briefly before. Fang had gone off on his own more than once. Iggy had joined a cult. Nudge once wanted to cut off her wings. Gazzy almost blew up his sister, and Angel had always had a bit of a God complex.

But this was the first time that the flock had really, truly, broken up, and it was the worst possible timing. After the world ends, you really need someone you can count on, you know?

No problem. Just leave it to Numero Uno to pick up the pieces. As usual.

I went back into the house, past Nudge and Total, who were sitting dejectedly at the kitchen table.

“I used to think you couldn’t trust adults,” I announced, banging open the cupboards to search for anything we could use. “But really, you can’t trust anyone. Not kids, not mutants.”

My fingers trembled with rage. I swiped my arm across the shelf and Total whistled as dishes clattered to the floor. I flung jars of rotten Vegemite at the wall and stabbed a dull, useless knife into the counter. Nudge gasped.

“Nothing, nothing, nothing!” I bellowed.

I collapsed onto the couch and raked my hands back through my snarled hair, trying to get a grip on myself. “How am I going to do this alone? There’s no one left.”

“Gee, thanks, Maximum,” Total said pointedly, and strode out, his black nose pointed in the air.

“Come on,” I called. “I didn’t mean—”

“That we don’t count?” Nudge said coolly from the kitchen, where she was opening other cupboards. “Even though we’re the only ones who stayed with you?” Her cheek was healing, but there was still a huge, jaw-shaped wound, and it made her expression hard to read.

I sighed. “Of course you count, Nudge. Let’s just go back to the island, all right? Like we said.”

“There’re no boys left is what you meant,” she continued bitterly, cocking her head. “No Dylan. No Fang. No more cute guys to obsess over you.”

I pressed my lips together and stared at her. “What?”

But Nudge was on a roll. “Poor, poor Max,” she said, finding some ancient cans of tuna and an old jar of hearts of palm. Who eats that? “How are you going to survive with no one to fight over your attention?”

“Nudge,” I said, getting up, “you know I’ve never been the princess. Always been the dragon-slayer. Look at me: If I wanted guys falling all over me, don’t you think I would wash up once in a while?”

Nudge frowned but followed me through the cottage as I gathered our meager belongings, layering clothes and tucking a rusty hammer and an old water bottle into my tattered pack. It wouldn’t last much longer.

“It’s just always about you,” Nudge said, but with less heat.

That stopped me in my tracks. I turned and took both her shoulders, looking up into the face that might never regain its startling, budding beauty. “Sweetie,” I said softly. “It’s always about us, the flock. It’s always, always, always about the flock. I don’t know how to do it any other way.”

Nudge gave a shuddering breath, then nodded and rested her untorn cheek on my shoulder. We hugged for a long time, until a neglected Total weaseled his way between our legs, pushing like a little bulldozer until we made room for him.

With a watery smile, I patted his head and nodded at Nudge.

“Pack up,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

We would survive. We always had. We just had less to lose now.

25

The journey back to our island seemed to take twice as long as we remembered. Ever wonder why birds fly in a V? Because each bird deflects a little of the wind for the birds behind it. It’s all about teamwork, folks. Of course, with just Nudge and Total, my team was really more of a trio.

Despite Total’s protests about the fabulousness of his wings, he’s still a little guy and flying long distance is hard for him. Nudge and I took turns letting him piggyback. By the time we saw the outline of familiar cliffs in the distance, I was more exhausted than I’d ever been, and the only thought in my head was The flock is over. The flock is over. The flock is over.

“Just a little farther,” I said, as much to convince myself as Nudge and Total.

But our island was still a desolate disaster. Black smoke hung thick over everything, and by half a mile out, Nudge sounded like she was coughing glass, and tears streamed down my face as tiny flecks of burning material flew into my eyes.

The air was so toxic that flying inland just wasn’t possible. Instead, we flew along the outer edge of the island, heading upwind for the far north side, away from the volcano, where the smoke wasn’t quite so thick.

“I’m so tired,” Nudge complained, moving her wings in slow arcs to conserve energy. “Max, what are we gonna do?”

“We’ll find a place to land,” I assured her, though it was hard to keep the doubt out of my voice.

My flock of three hovered in silence for a few moments, contemplating the ash cloud and the sea of lava that now coated everything.

“Max... I’m not questioning your judgment, but our former home doesn’t exactly look livable at the moment.” Total gave my neck a brief lick, as if to soften his words.

Total had always been a little high-maintenance, but I had to admit he had a point. Food alone was already starting to feel urgent, and anything that had survived the initial explosion and tsunami was now almost certainly overcooked barbecue.

We were in dire straits indeed.

“Wait — there’s something moving down there.” I pointed. “Look.”

As we dipped lower, I saw that it wasn’t just something alive. It was someone. Human.

“Hey!” I screamed at the boy. “Hey!”

If you know me, you know I’m normally a big believer in Stranger Danger. My friends wouldn’t exactly describe me as a people person, since I generally loathe most of the people I come in contact with. (To be fair, a lot of them have tried to kill me.)

But the population of the world had been sliced drastically, I’d just lost most of my family, and I really just wanted a little sympathetic company, okay?

So I kept shouting and waving like a maniac, barely noticing when one of the figures moved away from the others and bent down to position something on the shore.

And when I saw the spark, my first thought was about how these people could be useful to us, since they had a lighter.

But then there was a whizzing sound in the air, and the small spark suddenly got very large as it rocketed up at us. Suddenly, it all clicked into place for me.

“Bank!” I yelled, yanking Nudge’s arm right as the firework exploded with a pop of dazzling red.

26

“Oof,” I said as my body bounced and then sank against the woven rope net held taut by dozens of hands.

They saved us! was my first thought.

They shot us! was my second.

Remembering the rocket, I wiggled my fingers, making sure I hadn’t lost any digits. Other than a ringing in my ears that was going to lead to a whopping migraine, I was in one piece.

I peered at my attackers through the rope. Some of them had webbed toes, and others had legs that were fused together to the knees, so that they sort of hopped.

Mutants.

They turned their heads as someone approached, and I saw that all of them had little slits behind their ears, opening and closing as they sucked in air. Gills. Just like ours.

“Release them,” a male voice ordered, and they all let go at once.

Nudge, Total, and I tumbled into one another on the ground. “Hey, easy!” I said, and looked up at the mutants’ apparent leader. “And you are...?”

“Rizal.” He was short and muscular with brown, deeply tanned skin and hair that hung down into his eyes. From the way the other kids were looking at him, he was clearly in charge.

“So, Rizal.” I shook the netting free from my shoulders and stood up, matching his even gaze. “Do you mind telling me why you shot a rocket at us and trapped us in nets?”

“That was a defense mechanism Jonny Diamond has been working on for months.” Rizal nodded to a skinny kid with glasses. “He calls it the Jeweled Star.”

“I don’t care what it’s called,” I said. “Why did you shoot us out of the sky?”

“It was a warning. To stay away from our island.”

Say what?

My eyes narrowed. “Um, I’m pretty sure this is our island,” I said, suddenly feeling very territorial about this unlivable piece of volcanic rock.

“Hang on.” Nudge cut in. “I know some of these kids. Hey, Angela!” She waved. “And Barry!” The fish kids didn’t wave back, but Nudge didn’t seem to mind. “We all swam together at the waterfall the first day Nino Pierpont brought us here! Remember? We thought everyone else had died! Where have you been the last three months?”

“So you were part of the original people?” I asked. “I guess we all belong here, then.”

“Not anymore,” Rizal said. “We’re an exclusive community now.”

The two kids flanking him leveled the sharp-arrowed ends of their spearguns at us, and others used the nets to bind our hands.

What did I tell you? You can’t trust anyone.

27

I stared at the bare feet with their webbed toes approaching us. I was already cranky from the night we’d spent tied up in an oversized lobster cage — just ask me how much I love cages — and the new day wasn’t looking much better.

Now that I’d lost my freedom, I was starting to see how shortsighted my argument for taking things slow really was. I wanted to know who was behind this, and I wanted to know now.

“Who’s in charge?” I shouted at the fish kids as they passed by. “What happened the day the sky caught fire? Are the caves still accessible?”

None of the fish kids would so much as look at us, though, and every one of them was heavily armed this time, with spearguns strapped over their shoulders and knives hugging their ankles and thighs.

“The full battalion, eh?” I observed dryly. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were afraid of us.”

“Overgrown guppies,” Total growled through his teeth. They’d wrapped seaweed around his snout to make a makeshift muzzle, but if there’s anyone you can’t shut up, it’s Total.

Then Rizal himself stood in front of us and pulled a large hunting knife from his belt. He tested the blade with his thumb, and I scowled.

“It’s a little cowardly to kill somebody when they’re tied up, don’t you think?”

Silently, Rizal released the door of the cage and then cut through the rope that bound our wrists. I rubbed my raw skin, not taking my eyes from the knife. If Rizal made a move, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

“Our weapons are for hunting,” he said evenly, and dumped a basket of fish at our feet. “And no one gives us orders. We rule ourselves.”

I hadn’t understood how starved I’d been until then, and Nudge, Total, and I all lunged for the basket. When I held a silvery body in shaking hands, I told myself it was just like sushi. Like a sushi kit. The sushi was just still inside, that’s all. As the mutant kids looked on with expressionless faces, I hungrily tore into the fish’s side, ignoring scales and fine bones and just chomping away. I ate it like an ear of corn, turning it around, nibbling off every bit of flesh, and then throwing the head and tail into a pile. Then I grabbed another one.

By the end of our messy feast, we all had shining scales flecking our hair and skin, bloody mouths, and unnamable gore lodged so deeply under our nails that it would probably never come out. I felt a thousand percent better.

After Total let out a delicate burp, Rizal finally spoke. “We’ve decided you can stay in our community,” he said. He walked back and forth in front of us with his spear slung over his shoulder. “Once we are there, you will not swim in the open water. You will not be permitted to hunt. You will not leave the caves.”

I looked up from my pile of fish bones. So the caves are intact.

“I am an excellent paddler!” Total protested. “And the girls both have gills...”

Rizal dismissed the suggestion. “If you don’t follow the rules, you’ll be killed.”

“Wow, love the hospitality.” I wiped the blood from my lips and accepted that my hair would smell like fish guts for the rest of my life. “You rule yourselves, but you kill any dissenters. Is that what happened to everyone else?”

“We didn’t murder the other mutants. When the sea first flooded the caves, there was no way out. The bird kids, the bug kids — everyone drowned all around us.”

“What about the humans?” I asked, trying to temper my hope. Maybe Angel couldn’t sense anyone’s thoughts on this part of the island after the first few days, including the fish kids and my mom. There was a chance...

Rizal snorted. “Pierpont barricaded himself in the food vault because it was watertight. It was almost a month before the sea receded enough for us to pry open the door.”

“He left everyone else to starve?” Nudge gasped.

Rizal nodded in disgust. “We found him curled on the floor. Ironically, he escaped drowning but died of thirst. Every can of soup and fruit had been sucked dry.”

“And the others?” Total asked quietly. “Do you know their fates?”

“The girl, you mean? And the veterinarian?”

My half sister, Ella. My mom.

Rizal flicked the dark hair out of his eyes absently, as if nothing at all was riding on his next words. “Same as all the rest,” he said, shrugging. “The water came in. We swam. They drowned.”

“Oh,” I said in a flat voice, and gripped the rock floor for support as I felt my blood draining.

Deep down, I’d known that was the likeliest scenario, but I understood now why Iggy hadn’t wanted to stay on the island: Not really knowing was so much better than knowing.

Because you could never get that hope back.

28

“Don’t be afraid of Rizal,” the kid called Jonny Diamond said. “He can be harsh, but he’s just trying to keep us safe.”

Everyone was getting ready to go to the caves, but I’d remained rooted to the rock long after the feast, thinking about my family. I thought about how Ella’s face lit up when she looked at Iggy, and how she never even got to go to a school dance with him. About how, even though my mom was supersmart and at the top of her field, she was always trying to do mom things for me, like cooking great meals and getting me my own bed with fancy sheets and snuggling me, even when I resisted, because she knew I secretly craved that contact. I remembered how they’d both opened their home to me the very first day we’d met — never mind that I was a stranger, a mutant, and being shot at by stupid teenage boys.

Yet, though I managed to look out for the rest of my flock, I hadn’t kept my human family safe when it mattered. And now, though I could still hear Ella’s laugh and remember what my mom smelled like (antiseptic, vanilla shampoo, and cinnamon gum), I couldn’t quite picture their faces.

Anyway, I’d been meditating on that cheery subject for hours, so I must’ve looked pretty desolate by the time Jonny came in.

But scared? Of Rizal? Doubtful.

“Who says I’m afraid of anything?” I asked, sitting up straighter.

Jonny chuckled and scooped up the pile of fish bones, tossing them back into the sea. “Well, you should be scared about the state of the world. If you’ve survived out there for this long, I figured you’d know that by now.”

I eyed the belching volcano in the distance and the swirls of hardened lava just a few feet away. My expression softened.

“Yeah, this whole apocalypse thing is pretty surreal, huh? Did my mom... Did Dr. Martinez know what happened? What caused it?”

Jonny grabbed the rope netting, then sat down next to me on the rock ledge. “I thought she said something about Russia’s betrayal...” My eyebrows shot up at the mention of the very place Angel had gone to, but Jonny shook his head uncertainly. “That day was really crazy, though. Pierpont had all this high-tech equipment, but all it told us was that a few small objects had exploded on contact with the earth’s atmosphere.”

Meteors. That’s what Dylan said, too. But they couldn’t have been small. They must have been huge, and more than just a few of them, judging by the mess we saw.

“We were all in the caves by then, though, so we couldn’t see what was happening outside.”

“The sky caught fire,” I said, remembering how there’d been a huge black hole ringed in flames.

“But here’s the thing: The hits were only reported in the Pacific.”

“So?”

“So the local tsunamis would’ve been caused by the impact, but what about the other reports we heard?” Jonny seemed to catch himself. He focused on the net in his lap, knotting it expertly. “Sorry, you don’t want to get me started on all my theories...”

“Hey, I asked, didn’t I?” I took a length of rope and mimicked his hand movements. “I’m a big fan of conspiracy theories.”

They line up with my real-world experience: that pretty much everyone I meet is out to get me.

Jonny’s eyes became animated. “Okay. So, the meteor fragments were in the Pacific,” he repeated. “But that first day, we got news blips from all over the world about other sudden disasters — too many global events for coincidence.” He gestured with his speargun on the rock as if marking spots on a map. “I’m talking rumors of nukes being deployed in Africa, several heads of state murdered, a lockdown in the US, a major epidemic in East Asia... There’s a lot we don’t know, but I’m positive it was all orchestrated by people with a lot of money and power. They wanted to destroy the world, and might not be too happy to find out a bunch of mutant kids survived. I’ve been telling Rizal we need to make more weapons.” He stabbed the spear into the sand and looked up as if scanning for trouble from the sky. “We have to be prepared to fight.”

I guessed his theories were more right than wrong. What else did he know? “Right before she died, my mom warned us about a biological weapon called the H8E virus,” I told him. “Did you hear about any connection to the Apocalypticas? Or the Doomsday Group? Or H-men? Or the Remedy?”

If anyone knows her genocidal terrorist flash cards by heart, it’s me. I certainly have enough experience with them at this point.

“The epidemic started right before the meteor, and together they must have wiped out most of the people in the world. We haven’t heard any updates since that very first day, before the tsunami hit and the caves flooded. Which reminds me — we should be heading out in just a few minutes. Let’s get you suited up.” He stood up and started lugging over the ancient oxygen tank he’d brought in. “Since all the equipment stopped working, we’ve been totally cut off from the rest of the world.” He shrugged. “Rizal says it’s better this way — that we have everything we need in the caves, and we shouldn’t go looking for trouble.”

Sounds familiar.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Jonny opened his mouth, but hesitated. “I think trouble’s rarely in hiding,” he answered finally. “And if someone planned something on this scale?” His eyes widened, magnified by his glasses. “Then none of us is safe.”

29

“I don’t need that,” I said, waving away the oxygen tank Jonny had set in front of me.

He continued sorting tubes. “There should be a bit left in the cylinder. The Aquatics don’t really need them, but we keep a couple of spares for emergencies.”

“I can breathe underwater,” I insisted. “Same as you.”

Jonny sat back and looked at me. “For how long?”

“Well, a long time,” I said. “And at great depth.” I nudged the cylinder with my foot. “So I don’t need that. Trust me.”

Jonny frowned at my wings. “Those things are going to cause you serious drag.”

“At least I don’t have freaking scales all over my back,” I snapped.

Jonny grinned good-naturedly. “Don’t take it so personally. There’s always someone in the group who’s a little vulnerable.” He touched the frames of his glasses and grinned. “How many Aquatics do you think need a prescription?”

I pursed my lips, unmoved, and Jonny shrugged.

“Okay, so you don’t need it to breathe, fine. But can you do me a favor and bring it with you? That way the tanks will all be at the caves. Otherwise, I’ll have to leave it here.”

Okay, that made sense. I could do him a favor. I lifted the backpack with its heavy, dinged-up tank. The straps weren’t going to fit over my oh-so-disgraceful, draggy wings, so I wore it backward, with the single tank in front of my chest.

Nudge, also carrying an oxygen tank in front, went in right before me. I plopped in last, splashing with my awkward tank, and as I swam after them toward the mouth of the tunnel that would take us to our sanctuary, I tried to work on a little thing called humility.

30

We swam. I kept my wings tightly folded against my back. I’m not a bad swimmer, but the Aquatics had obviously been designed for this: Though clumsy and awkward on land, in the water they became graceful, fluid, powerful swimmers.

The ocean, which only three months ago had been crystalline, a clear, clean aqua, was now a murky, opaque sludge with almost zero visibility. I followed Jonny mostly by the swirling eddies of ash particles, while trying to keep an eye on Nudge. The stupid oxygen tank made it hard to swim, weighing me down, and I considered just ditching it.

“Aiiieeeeee!!!!”

The panicked scream was garbled and muffled, but unmistakable. My head whipped around but I saw nothing but churned-up sludge. More screams echoed through the water around me, and I glimpsed a couple of the Aquatics speeding past me with terrified expressions. What’s happening? Where is Nudge?

Was it a... party? The murky water seemed alive with streamers whipping and writhing in the currents. Could this be some sort of welcoming ceremony? Someone had been surprised and had screamed?

Oh, God, oh, God. My brain had no time to think except to register: These streamers are alive.

They were eels or water snakes, and they were freakishly large. Slick ropes of muscle fifteen feet long and as thick as my waist, they made looping Ss through the water, disappearing and reappearing confusingly so that I lost all sense of direction.

But the most horrible part was their mouths. Their whole heads, really, were circular vacuums of death, with rows and rows of teeth spiraling inward toward a gaping hole. The kind of thing you don’t want to see on a movie screen, let alone near your leg.

Uh-huh. My leg.

There it was, slimy and quick, with its razor-sharp teeth moving closer and closer to my flesh. Once it attached, I felt a powerful leechy sucking sensation and then the first jolt of pain. I kicked at it, but my splashing just seemed to attract more of them, and I could only hold them off so much longer.

Desperate, I did the only thing I could think of: I slipped off the straps of the oxygen tank and quickly turned its valve. Immediately, pressurized bubbles burst out of it with the power of a fire hose, sending the eels wheeling away from me. I grinned victoriously but then blanched when I realized why the eels weren’t returning.

A flash of color in the olive-green water caught my eye. It was striped, like Jonny Diamond’s shirt. They’d found a new target: Jonny. I kicked with my legs, aiming my tank, but stopped in horror as I took in the scene:

One had suctioned onto him, and the snakelike body streamed out from his chest. For a second it just seemed like a small inconvenience, an odd extra limb, and Jonny tugged at the tail determinedly.

For a second.

And then Jonny’s expression changed.

His mouth opened in a silent scream, a flurry of bloody bubbles escaping from it, and the muscles in his neck tightened into cords of agony. His eyes bulged in disbelief as his legs flailed and his hands scratched and tugged at the creature desperately.

The sucking mouth was burrowing into him.

Aiming my tank, I opened the valve, but only a tiny stream of bubbles came out: I’d used up the last of the oxygen. My mouth pressed tight in shock, I saw Jonny’s head go limp, his whole body becoming boneless, like a rag doll’s. Instinctively I moved away from him. When I looked back a final time, more toothy mouths had latched on to Jonny’s body, burrowing into his chest, thighs, and stomach until he looked like some sort of mutant octopus. Two brilliant red ribbons of blood floated up out of his nostrils.

Something brushed against my arm, and I kicked wildly, a rush of adrenaline making my ears sing. But it was only Nudge, as stricken as I was.

I was freaking out, but I grabbed Nudge’s hand and swam hard in what I thought was the direction of the tunnels. All I wanted was to breathe real air, scream, and then cry. When a few inches of space opened above the water, we surfaced, gasping. Behind me, a bloom of crimson stained the turquoise sea.

The splashing had stopped.

31

In today’s world, heaven pretty much boiled down to actual beds, reliable shelter, and a consistent food source. The caves were something else altogether.

“Look how beautiful it is.” Nudge’s voice was tired; her face was pale with shock and the effort of swimming through the death tunnel. I tried to quickly count heads, but I could only estimate that we’d lost about six of the Aquatics. More than half of the number that had started with us.

And the weird thing was, not a single person seemed bothered by Jonny’s gruesome death or the loss of several of their friends. No one had mentioned it, no one seemed surprised, and no one was crying. Which told me that it was a common occurrence. That they had known about the horrific eel/snake/leech things and had gone anyway. Had made us go in anyway.

Now we were here, in supposed safety. I kept Nudge close to me, not trusting these guys for a second.

The tunnel opened up to a large hall, and Nino Pierpont had gone all out with the decorations. There were pillars and balconies, and the walls were elaborately carved shells. The ceiling hundreds of feet above was a skylight of thick glass, so dull light shone down and speckled the puddles of water, making them shimmer.

In one part of the complex, a lake had formed in a low spot when the ocean had receded after the tsunami. The result was an Olympic-sized natural swimming pool that was cut off from the danger of open water. I watched other Aquatics splashing around, flicking their fins happily.

“Max,” Nudge whispered. “Doesn’t it remind you of...?”

I nodded. This mutant kid utopia reminded me exactly of the paradise we’d first believed our island to be, and that’s what made me nervous.

Because we all know how well that turned out.

I found Rizal at the communal table, surrounded by elaborate platters of fish, more fish, soup with fish in it, and then for dessert, like, fish. I slid into the seat across from him. He looked mildly annoyed, but he didn’t ask me to leave.

“Let’s talk about the huge, kid-eating eels of death,” I said conversationally.

Rizal was distracted with his dinner and barely looked up. “Hmm?”

“The giant eely-snake things that turned Jonny Diamond into Swiss cheese?” I prompted.

“Oh, them.” Rizal shoved a large spoonful of stew into his mouth. “Lampreys.”

“Lampreys aren’t that big. So I’m assuming they’re weird, gigantic, mutant lampreys. At any rate, no one seems too bothered that those lampreys just reduced your number by six.” I stared at him impatiently.

“It happens,” he said, chewing. “We tend to lose someone every few days.”

“Every few days?” I repeated, gaping at him.

Rizal shrugged. “Generally, they only pick off the less advanced.”

“There’s always someone in the group who’s a little vulnerable,” Jonny had said. That was supposed to be me, and would’ve been, if I hadn’t had the oxygen tank he’d insisted I take.

“Have some sashimi,” Rizal said, spearing some hunks with his knife and plopping them in front of me. “The eel is terrific.”

My mind flashed back to that horrible image of Jonny — the moment he stopped struggling against the lamprey. Nauseated, I pushed away the plate and left the table.

I needed to think — which meant I needed to fly.

Unfurling my wings, which had been folded up all day, I pushed off and rose up toward the glass ceiling. My feathers twitched as I tried to imagine myself flying in circles around these walls, day after day. I was already feeling claustrophobic.

Cruising high above the chatter, I went over everything Jonny had said earlier that morning. I needed something to make it easier to cope, a moral to take away from this, and my thoughts drifted back to the flock.

Like Iggy, Jonny had needed a resolution. Like Gazzy, he had been building tools to fight, instead of hide. And like Angel, he had been sure there was more to be done.

I’m not saying I was wrong, before — I’d never say that — but maybe I could understand a little better why my flock had insisted on leaving.

If there was a reason so many people I cared about had died, if none of us was safe, could I really keep looking away? Didn’t I owe it to them to hunt down the truth?

“Rizal says we shouldn’t go looking for trouble,” Jonny had said, and that was pretty much what I’d told the flock yesterday.

But if I lived by that rule, would I really be Maximum Ride?

32

“Nudge, wake up.”

I didn’t know why I was whispering. There were rows and rows of beds built into the coral wall, but Nudge’s and mine were the only two that were occupied. I guessed the lampreys had pretty much decimated the Aquatics. What was Rizal thinking?

Total was lying on the floor — since Akila died, he’d been uncharacteristically quiet, spending time on his own, lying around a lot. I knew he was grieving, and I wished I could do more for him.

Looking at the empty beds, I could still feel some lingering sense of the kids who should’ve been here, the mutants and humans who had believed they were safe. I wondered if Ella had slept in any of these bunks.

“Come on, Nudgelet, let’s go,” I said more loudly, and shook her shoulder.

“Go?” Nudge mumbled, sinking deeper into the sponge mattress.

“Yeah,” I said. “We should be gone before the Fish Sticks return from the morning hunt.”

Nudge propped herself up on her elbows, alert now. “You wanna leave? Why?”

“Uh... because we’re in mutant-eating-lamprey-infested waters? Did you see how everyone shrugged off Jonny’s death yesterday? Rizal is just another crazy leader in a long, long line of crazy leaders we’ve dealt with. Do you really need another reason? We can’t stay here.”

Nudge blinked at me, her eyes round with alarm and already brimming. “What do you mean we can’t stay?”

From the ground near the door, Total raised his furry eyebrows at me, but he didn’t say anything.

Nudge, on the other hand, was incredulous. “You wanted this! The flock split up, everyone left us because you wanted to come back to this island!”

“I know. But that was before...”

Before I knew my family was really dead.

Before I heard Jonny’s theories.

Before it seemed like someone could be held accountable.

“That was before we knew the vaccine was wiped out in the tsunami,” I said. “Now there’s no reason for us to stay. I mean, don’t you want to know what happened? Don’t you want some answers?”

“No!” Nudge shook her head emphatically. “That’s why I didn’t leave with Angel. I know more than I ever wanted to know already, and most of it’s terrible. I’m tired, Max. Tired of flying around hoping for something better. The Aquatics have a good thing going here — rarities like, you know, food and actual beds.” She waved her pillow. “These kids are survivors, just like us, and we’re lucky they made us welcome.”

“These kids are not like us. These kids are sociopaths.”

Nudge shrugged. “Maybe their culture is just uncomplicated.”

“Staying here won’t help you forget about the past,” I said gently.

“And leaving won’t help you change it,” she bit back. “The world ended, Max, and I promise, nobody blames you for not being able to save it. You don’t have to go.”

I held Nudge’s gaze for a long time, weighing her words. “I need to know the truth,” I said quietly. “I didn’t before. But now I think... I think truth is better than relative safety.”

Nudge nodded and hugged her pillow close, and I knew she wouldn’t change her mind.

“So — you’re going to stay here,” I said, just to make sure.

Nudge nodded again.

I looked at Total. The Scottie dog stood up, puffed out his wiry chest, and seemed to grow a little taller. “I will miss you, of course, Max. But I will stay here with Nudge. I need... time to heal. Time to reflect.”

“Of course you do,” I said, picking him up. He snuggled his head into my shoulder, and I tried not to cry. Nothing about my life made sense — I was going on pure instinct, and it was like walking on a tightrope, with the safety net of my flock gone.

When Total looked up, his chocolate eyes were glistening.

“Here,” Nudge said, taking an oversized sweatshirt from her bedding. “Rizal said temperatures are dropping — they can sense the extra oxygen in the water.”

“It’s okay. I don’t need—”

Nudge rolled her eyes. “I know. You don’t need any help from anyone. I’m trying to give you a farewell gift. Just take it, okay?”

“My Nudgelet.” Her spiral curls were fuzzy from sleep, and I kissed the top of her head affectionately. “You take extra good care of yourself, hear? If I come back and find you dead, I personally will haul you out of the grave and kill you again.”

My stern lecture earned a watery smile. “You take care, too, Max.”

As I walked through the cavernous halls toward the tunnel entrance, it was the first time in a long time I’d been alone, and if I’m being honest, it scared the crap out of me.

But there was one other thing Jonny had said that stuck with me: “There’s always someone in the group who’s a little vulnerable.” On my own, at least I’d be forced to be strong.

33

I left the caves at low tide, because the last thing I wanted to do was set foot in that water again.

I flew as long as I could through the tunnel, squeezing my body into the small space between the waves and the ceiling and flapping my wings in stunted little flicks. I was still forced underwater a few times, and I was on such high alert that I almost strangled a rogue piece of seaweed.

When I finally burst out of the tunnel, I was so happy to be free that I wanted to stay in the air forever — I didn’t care how polluted it was.

Let me tell you, that feeling got old real fast.

I started off heading north. Angel had promised answers in Russia, and my mom had mentioned it the day the sky caught fire. Like Jonny, I had to trust that there were no coincidences — in this strange new world, my gut was all I had to go on.

Unfortunately, my gut didn’t warn me of a tropical storm on the ol’ radar. I only saw it when I was almost upon it, because of how ash-filled the sky was, even at ten thousand feet. I immediately swerved west and tried to outfly it, but it was too big.

Storm-force wind, needlelike rain, ash, and debris blasted me from all sides, twisting me around and trying to take me down. I was in the middle of the ocean, so I couldn’t land; I couldn’t sleep; I couldn’t stop flying, even for an instant.

Out of the storm wasn’t much better. I flew north for several days, alone with my thoughts and shivering inside my sweatshirt. Rizal had been right — the temperature continued to drop. I was numb and alone, and hunger gnawed me inside out every minute, but two words sustained me: Find. Truth. The truth, bobbing just beyond the next wave. The truth, rising with each new hazy day. It became everything.

When I finally saw the uneven blob in the distance that suggested land, I was convinced I was hallucinating. But the strip got bigger, filling the horizon. I had no idea where in the vast Russian countryside Angel would be, but I was sure she’d jailbreak my brain and send a little message via the voice — the kid had no boundaries.

So far, nothing.

As I flew farther inland, a vast, circular valley stretched out below me, with a gray shelf of rock built up all around it. Hulking objects dotted the yellow land, and when I dove lower to get a better look, I thought I was seeing things in my exhaustion. At first my spirit soared at the realization that those dots were thousands of animals...

Until the smell hit me.

Every single creature lay dead. Lions, zebras, giraffes, all in varying stages of decomposition.

Uh, pretty sure there aren’t giraffes in Russia, rotting or not.

I saw someone wrapped head to toe in a burgundy fabric, huddling over one of the fresher corpses — some kind of deer. I stood watching nimble fingers snatch bones already picked clean and tuck them into hidden pockets.

Finally, I tucked my wings inside my sweatshirt and cleared my throat, and the figure turned.

The amber-colored eyes were all that was visible beneath the folds of fabric, and they widened at my approach.

“You are not burned!” a woman’s voice exclaimed.

“No...” I said uneasily.

Was that something she hoped to fix?

“Every person that comes to us from the city is burned.” A man I hadn’t seen stood up from behind the bulk of a water buffalo. He was also in a full robe.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not from the city. Which city, by the way?”

Which country and which continent, for that matter?

The two swaddled figures turned toward each other in silent communication.

“Do you know why all these animals died?” I interrupted.

“Come,” the woman said, walking away. “Come with us to our home and we will talk.”

Exhausted, starving, and desperate for answers, I followed.

34

“There was a very bright flash of light, and then heat all around.” Azizi was an animated storyteller, and his breath made the candle jump.

Once inside the mud-packed hut, my hosts had pulled their cloaks down around their shoulders, and I saw that Azizi and his sister, Nuru, had albinism. “We have to cover our skin,” Nuru explained. “Or the sun cooks it.”

They reminded me of Angel and Gazzy, and it wasn’t just their fair hair and skin. Nuru was measured and unreadable, while Azizi could be goofy, filling the spaces between his sister’s silences.

“A Jeep from one of the travel groups, its windows, pfft.” Azizi made a fist and shot his fingers out to signify the explosion of glass.

The travel groups were safaris — I learned that I was in eastern Africa, in the Ngorongoro Crater. I’d gotten pretty turned around in that storm.

“And then the animals, they sink to their knees and lie down, one by one,” Azizi went on. “They raise their voices and beg for Death to come to them! And Death, he comes.”

Nuru was boiling the bones she’d collected earlier for their marrow, and she looked over to where we sat cross-legged on the mat.

“At first it was very good fortune, you can imagine. So much meat that we didn’t have to hunt. But now, as you see, the meat rots, and we are very hungry.”

“After the animals, every person we see is a burned man,” Azizi continued. “Until you.”

I leaned closer. “And what did the burn victims say?”

“One man saw a smoking tree rising into the sky, its branches full. Another said it was a pale woman standing tall with a basket on her head. My sister, she says it is God they saw in the sky.”

I chewed my lip, thinking. Dead animals, burned men. Another seemingly huge disaster, but what did it have to do with a virus in Asia, or a betrayal in Russia?

“So none of these people were actually in the center? Was everyone else killed? You didn’t wonder what happened?”

The siblings looked at each other — that silent understanding I’d seen earlier. Nuru’s voice was soft when she spoke. “Yes. We wondered. But we cannot go back to the city.”

“Why not?”

Azizi got quiet for the first time all evening. He shrugged the bright purple cloak aside, and when he unwrapped his arm, I saw that his left hand was gone at the wrist.

“In our country, albinos are said to be good fortune. Witch doctors like to lie to the people to line their pockets. So there have been attacks...”

“Someone cut your hand off?” I gasped.

“Bad fortune for me,” Azizi said, somehow able to laugh about something so horrible.

“We came to the caldera because the Masai tribe thinks we are better luck alive than dead,” Nuru said. “Many times, they bring us their cattle blood milk.” She held out a cup to me.

I didn’t particularly love the idea of the vampire diet, but I wasn’t too picky these days. I also didn’t want to be rude, so I took a long swig.

“Mmm.” The mixture was thick, closer to pudding than milk, and wonderfully warm as it went down my throat. It was salty, with a sharp, coppery tang, but it wasn’t half bad.

“Yes, it is nourishing.” Nuru nodded as I tipped the clay cup back again. “This is the last of it now, so soon we will die.”

I sputtered, choking on the dregs — I couldn’t believe I’d just gulped down the last of their stash! “I’ll help you find food,” I promised, taking Nuru’s hand.

“There is nothing.” Azizi shook his head sadly. “We have searched as far as our feet can carry us. There are only bones.”

“I can search farther than you. And I can go into the city.” I pulled the sweatshirt over my head and shrugged it off my shoulders, stretching my wings long.

Azizi fell backward in the dirt, scrambling away in terror, but Nuru was grinning at me.

“You are a gift to us!” she exclaimed.

I had to smile. In the rest of the world, mutants were old news, but here, I was still a novelty. Here, people still thought I could help.

35

I stretched my limbs out on the woven rug. I felt the dried grasses poking through my sweatshirt, but I didn’t mind.

The earthy scent of the walls filled my nostrils, along with the musk of bodies packed close and old cooking spices — the smells of community.

I’d always thought of myself as so independent, but as I listened to Nuru’s and Azizi’s slow, steady breathing across the room, I realized just how terribly I’d missed my flock, and I finally felt some comfort.

In the moment before I drifted to sleep, the peaceful snoring stopped. Instead, I heard a ragged, nervous inhale, and my peripheral vision caught the arc of the blade swinging down behind my left shoulder.

My wings exploded outward, and I burst up through the mud roof before the knife could find its mark.

From twenty feet up in the air, still bewildered, I stared down through the wide, crumbling hole I’d torn in the hut. Nuru was on her feet, looking up at me, slack-jawed.

She was holding a machete.

I swooped back through the hole and tore it away from her, then glided out the door with it before my feet had ever touched the ground.

Nuru ran out of the hut, her brother trailing close behind.

I held the weapon in front of my face and plucked a cleanly halved feather off the blade. I exhaled a shaky breath.

So. Close.

When I looked back at Nuru and Azizi, the brother and sister I’d talked and laughed with, my temper exploded. “What were you doing with this thing?” I demanded, gesturing wildly.

“We are sorry,” Azizi said quickly, trying to smooth it over. “It is a mistake, you understand, a misunderstanding, that is all. Do not be angry with my sister.”

“We were only hungry, you see,” Nuru explained.

“You were going to eat me?” I asked, incredulous.

“Of course not!” Azizi answered. “We are not cannibals.”

“Just your wings,” Nuru admitted.

Call me crazy, but I didn’t find that very comforting.

“I told you I would help you find food,” I said sadly, turning away from the little bit of warmth I’d yearned for.

Obviously hoping my offer was still good, Azizi called, “Come back! We are sorry!”

“No doubt,” I answered, but I was already halfway across the desert by then.

36

Now what?

I had flown long enough for the cannibal creepshow to be far, far behind me, but my strength was giving out. I hadn’t seen anybody or anything for miles — no trees, no water, and definitely no food. I landed on a big pile of hard-packed dirt and thought. I was hungry and dehydrated, on the wrong continent, and completely alone. No flock, no Fang, no Dylan, no nobody.

Our island in the Pacific had been destroyed, apparently Australia had been destroyed, and now here I was in eastern Africa, which seemed extra destroyed.

That was a hefty chunk of the world. What in the heck had happened, to cause so much destruction on such a huge scale? Could any one being mastermind such a thing?

It was time to gather the very last dregs of my energy and head to Russia, thousands of miles north-northeast. The very thought made me want to cry. But first I had to—

“Gah!” I yelled, leaping up and flailing my arms and legs like a maniac. I whipped off my sweatshirt, tore off the undershirt beneath that, and scrambled out of my torn and worn-out jeans. Then I did a chaotic, herky-jerky shivering dance all across the dirt.

The mound I had been sitting on was a termite colony. And those little suckers had survived and were swarming all over me like white on rice.

“Gross, gross, gross!” I screamed, since no one was around to hear. I whirled and jumped and shook my hair out and rubbed my arms and legs until I seemed to be mostly termite free.

Then, panting, I looked back at my clothes, which were now a living carpet of pale white bugs. I was in my underwear and sports bra. I would not be going anywhere like this. I had a bit of mirror — I could maybe set the bugs on fire? That mirror was... safely in the front pocket of my jeans.

I stomped a couple of times and shouted every swear word I knew, which took almost ten minutes. Then, seething, I glared at the termites. Would they eat my clothes? I stared at the sweatshirt Nudge had given me until my eyes swam with tears and my vision blurred. Once my vision blurred, those stupid bugs looked just like... rice. I remembered that many animals, including humans, ate termites. The flock and I had eaten bugs before. Not termites, but big crickets, locusts, et cetera.

My stomach felt so hollow you could practically see my spine through it.

Time to suck it up, Maximum.

I lunged for my sweatshirt, grabbed it up, and started scarfing termites.

37

Two hours later I felt practically cheerful. That termite mound, once huge, was almost flat. I’d found termite nurseries where I could scoop up handfuls of pupae and wolf them down. Once I’d gotten used to the little feet and antennas tickling my throat, I’d started to appreciate their delicate, nutty flavor.

Now I lay flat on the ground, my belly full, my body surging to life with nourishment. “Yes, the African termite,” I murmured sleepily. “A bit tart, piquant, slightly reminiscent of quinoa...

“Ugh, get up, Max. You can rest later. You’re on a mission: You have to find out if whatever happened here is connected to something bigger.” Had anything Nuru and Azizi told me been true, or had they deceived me from the beginning?

So before I went to Russia, I journeyed south, figuring that Tanzania’s biggest city, Dar es Salaam, should be within a couple of hours’ flight.

And it was. Or at least, what I assumed was Dar es Salaam. Basically what I found was a city of ashes.

A large, circular area had been completely razed, with every single building leveled. I didn’t see any people. No corpses, either. Just shadows where everything had been incinerated — buildings, cars, and citizens, all together.

Away from the center, a few buildings were still partially standing — mostly the ones made of concrete. I flew to the top of one of them to get a better view, and I saw that its roof tiles had bubbled and blistered.

On the next block, a high-rise hotel looked like it had buckled at the knees — the lower floors had collapsed into a pile of rubble, with the untouched penthouse now balancing on top of it.

What happened here?

I was almost positive it wasn’t a natural disaster. It looked more like pictures of Hiroshima after World War II.

“But who would do this?” I wondered aloud. As far as I knew, Tanzania hadn’t been any kind of global threat. “Why here?”

“The Remedy does not discriminate.”

I whipped around at the sound of the deep voice and almost gasped: A giant of a man stood watching me. I have extra-good hearing — how had he gotten so close?

“Paris, Hong Kong, New York, here... All the world’s people must answer for crimes against the earth.”

“Who are you?” I asked sharply. And, more important, “Who is the Remedy?”

I remembered the word from the conversation on Fang’s blog. We’d thought it was a vaccine, maybe for the H8E virus. But this guy talked about it like it was a person, or some other kind of entity.

“Maximum Ride,” the broad-faced man said, ignoring my questions. “You seem to have lost your flock. The Remedy doesn’t like loose ends.”

“I’m starting to think me and this Remedy dude wouldn’t really get along.”

The giant may have been freakishly huge, but he couldn’t fly. I started to spring, but he was amazingly fast, and he batted me back down to the broken tiles with his massive fist as if I were a fly.

I’m stronger than most grown men, and I’ve been fighting for my life since I was barely able to walk. I’m lethal, and I know it. Now I fell back on the hand-to-hand combat I’d relied on so many times, dodging and weaving and getting a jab in when I could. But this guy was much stronger than most men, and stronger than me, and my hits didn’t seem to faze him.

He gave me a hard left to the head, smashing my cheek and whipping my head sideways. The sudden, awful pain made me want to throw up, and my reflexes slowed.

Swallowing down bile, I lunged across his right side for a kidney jab, but he caught my neck in a headlock. We stumbled around in a strange waltz as I tore at his arm. The giant flexed his muscles, crushing my windpipe more and more...

A euphoric feeling flooded my system as the blistered roof tiles beneath my feet started to blur and my legs turned to rubber. My vision went swimmy and it suddenly seemed so easy to just give up.

No!

With my last bit of breath, I fumbled for a steak knife I’d tucked into my belt.

I chopped down hard, burying the knife in the giant’s thigh. He grunted and his grip slackened a tiny bit, but it was enough. I dropped down, deadweight, and slipped out of his grasp. As he reached to pull out the knife, I seized a shard of broken tile and gouged at his eyes.

It was so, so horrible and gross. But effective.

He shrieked and lurched backward, stumbling blindly close to the edge. His huge ham hands covered his eyes, blood running through his fingers. There was a length of broken, rusty rebar sticking up out of the tiles, and I snatched it up and pointed it at his chest. If he lunged forward, he would impale himself. And I would help him.

“Let’s try this again,” I snarled. “Who is the Remedy?”

The giant began to laugh, his blood running into his mouth. “You believe you can escape him?” he asked. He laughed and laughed, until I was sure that grating sound would live on in my dreams. “I have failed, but more will follow, and you cannot escape us all. The Horsemen will ride on,” the man said, and then leaped to his death.

38

Nudge’s hands broke the surface of the cool, dark water as she dove. The cold made her gasp at first, but as she swam her body temperature adjusted and her skin tingled with pleasure.

The lake was Nudge’s favorite place in the caves, and she came here in the early mornings while the Aquatics were out hunting. The limestone walls reflected the light through small openings, making the shadowy water glow green. It was eerie and beautiful, like a place where fairies would live. Plus, no huge, kid-eating lampreys. A definite plus.

The other kids didn’t know what to make of her, so they kept their distance. She had gills, but no fins or webbed feet. But Nudge was strong, and by swimming lap after lap every day, she was getting stronger.

Her arms cut into the lake again and again with smooth, confident strokes. Her wings were folded tightly behind her. She stayed just below the surface of the water and opened her mouth like she’d seen the Aquatics do, letting in a little water so she could focus on filtering the oxygen through her gills instead of relying on her lungs.

They would call her the Flying Fish by the end of the summer.

She kept her eyes open and watched the fish swimming below her. It was so calm here, undisturbed by all the nightmares that were happening outside the caves. No snapping Cryenas, lampreys, Flyboys, or Erasers. She hated Erasers.

Nudge cherished the calm, even if it meant she got lonely. Even if it meant she would never see beyond these walls again.

“Don’t you want to know?” The memory of Max’s question nagged at her, and Nudge felt the smallest flicker of doubt.

She pushed it down as she always did, and got lost in the rhythm of her strokes until somewhere, as if in a distant world, she heard the barking.

Then a splash sent the whole lake rippling, and Nudge saw leather-booted feet wading toward her. She took in everything at once: Something was off.

The Aquatics don’t wear boots.

They don’t wade — they swim.

Nudge flipped, kicking hard against the wall, shooting away from those boots like a torpedo.

Her swimming had gotten quick, but he was quicker.

A gloved hand clamped around her foot, yanking her back. She felt the leather against her skin and thought of the scientists who’d tested and poked her — people always wore gloves to do dirty work.

That was when her panic really set in — the understanding of what might happen. What was about to.

No! Nudge’s brain railed against the possibility. I’m stronger than that!

She twisted in his grasp, thrashing fiercely, but iron hands closed around her throat. A heavy booted foot pushed her down, pinning her against the lake floor.

Don’t give up! a panicked part of her said. You’re the Flying Fish, and fish don’t drown!

But even flying fish need to breathe... and the hands were cutting off her gills and her windpipe. Her arms and legs felt weightless. The hands felt like an iron vise.

“Don’t you want to know?” Max’s words throbbed in her head.

As her eyes started to bulge in their sockets, the last thing Nudge saw was the strange look on the young man’s face, looking down at her through the rippling water.

Now I know, Max, she thought. Now I know the truth.

39

Horseman trudged out of the water of the lake. His pants clung to his legs, and he was breathing heavily after the struggle.

He had expected the whole thing to be easier and was surprised at how emotional he felt. That definitely wasn’t what the doctor had had in mind when he’d programmed his soldiers.

He waited several minutes, studying the rhythms of the ripples until he was sure his voice would be steady. Then Horseman pressed the call button implanted in his wrist.

A middle-aged face appeared on the screen: the Remedy.

“A10103!” he exclaimed.

Horseman nodded with a humble half-smile.

“I must admit I was beginning to worry. I nearly sent a rescue mission to root you out.” The doctor grinned wolfishly, and Horseman was grateful for the poor pixelation. “Tell me, how are your... travels?”

Keep it brief, just stick to the basics, Horseman reminded himself.

“I had a most satisfying morning, Doctor.”

“Oh, yes? Report: You haven’t killed the whole flock, have you?” The man’s bushy eyebrows jumped in feigned delight, but Horseman knew the doctor must have the same information that he did.

“No, sir. My coordinates indicate that the group has split up, so I am tracking them individually. But you’ll be pleased to know that Nudge... official name Monique,” he corrected himself, “is dead.”

“Well done!” the doctor praised Horseman, but blinked back at him expectantly, waiting for more information.

“Monique did not detect my approach, and my skills far outmatched hers. It was over in seconds.” Horseman knew his maker would want to know how strong he was, how impenetrable.

“I see,” the doctor said, sounding disappointed that there were no gruesome, salacious details.

“She... wept in fear,” Horseman offered.

“This is why we must press on in our cause.” The doctor’s voice rose emphatically. “The newer generations are stronger, more perfect. When it comes down to it, these so-called heroes are just accidents, like all of the older generations.”

“Yes. Accidents,” Horseman agreed. “Which reminds me...”

He looked across the pool of water at the ledge where Nudge’s limp body lay. He watched the small dog licking her face and smiled, then positioned his arm so that his master could see the image.

“Should I also destroy the remaining canine?” Horseman asked. “It would be my pleasure.”