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  “He said to tell you Fang sent me,” I said.

  “Yes!” Gazzy punched the air. “She knows where Fang is!”

  “Okay, now, Fang is at this children’s home?” Iggy said, suddenly all business.

  “No!” I said impatiently. “Fang is in prison, which is part of a much bigger complex, with things like this children’s home, but also a lab.”

  “That’s weird,” Gazzy said. He looked at the others. “Isn’t that weird?”

  “We specialize in weird,” Nudge said dryly, then motioned to me. “Come on, sit down, eat something while we come up with a plan.”

  “My friends are in danger now,” I said.

  Nudge sat down on an upturned wooden box and started rustling in a big leather backpack. “I know, honey. Would it be better for you to rescue ’em while you’re hungry, or rescue ’em when you’re not hungry?”

  I stood there, thinking. It’s like she nudges you toward doing that, too.

  “Better sit down. She doesn’t give up,” Iggy said, moving past me to another crate. His skinny knees stuck up like two triangles when he sat.

  “We have doughnuts,” Gazzy said, folding his wings in. Their wings were like mine, folding not once like Ridley’s, but twice, to rest neatly on either side of their spines. It was a comforting sight to see; someone like me, for the first time, ever.

  I sat.

  “Okay,” said Nudge, handing me a doughnut. “Tell us about this complex.”

  For the next twenty minutes I stuffed my face with doughnuts, then a bunch of dried fruit—like dried on purpose, not just old and yucky—then a little mesh bag of all kinds of nuts. Then a couple more doughnuts, not even all that stale.

  In between mouthfuls, I drew them a map of the complex in the thick dust on the floor. I showed them how it looked when I flew over it, where the gates were, the few windows, doors, and how they were guarded. I drew the long walkway to the Labs and showed how the prison was kind of off by itself but not far away. In a tiny box in one corner of one building, I scratched out the main room and the little sleeping closet of the Children’s Home.

  “That’s where you grew up,” Iggy said, rather than asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “There used to be a lot more of us, but now there’s only five. The last one we lost was Veil. You could sort of see through her, but she couldn’t pass through walls or anything. They took her like six months ago. She hasn’t come back. They never come back.”

  “And now they’ve taken everyone else,” Gazzy clarified.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Everyone but me and Clete. Me because I was… somewhere else, and Clete because he hid.” My face heated and turned pink as I thought about where I’d been, and with who. Kissing Pietro felt like a thousand years ago.

  “And you got injured how?” Nudge asked.

  My hand went to the C on my cheek, the flaming, red skin puffy under my touch. I told them about the Chungs and the Paters, Ones and Sixes, the street fights and the constant battle for pride and protection—one that the street rats like me ended up in the middle of, all too often. What I didn’t tell them was that I’d been sitting in a high-end tub, then been kissed by the Pater prince not too long ago. They didn’t need to know that. My blush got deeper. Nobody needed to know that.

  “Okay,” said Iggy, standing up. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 34

  I jumped to my feet. “Wait a second!” I said. “We don’t have a plan!”

  “We’re going to go rescue Fang,” Nudge said, sounding surprised. “Then your friends.”

  “My friends first,” I said, realizing that all my drawings and explanations had given them the only bargaining chip I had. They’d fed me doughnuts, and I’d downed them without question, happily giving away all my info while my brain drowned in sugar. I was a moron.

  “Fang first,” Iggy said mildly. “Then he can help save your friends.”

  I remembered the first look I’d had of the prisoner: strong and solid. If he was a decent guy, having him on our side to bust my friends out would be a good bet. But if he wasn’t… I shook my head. I was so down and out, this is where I’d landed. Trusting strangers.

  “That prison is pretty solid,” I reminded them. “Fang is on death row. I mentioned the thick walls, the guards, the guns, right?”

  “Yeah,” the Gasman said, sounding surprised. “Figure it’s pretty standard prison stuff.”

  “And we’re just… going to go break Fang out?”

  “Yeah,” said Nudge, smiling at me. “It’s okay, sweetie. We do this kind of thing all the time.” She pulled on the leather backpack. I noticed Gazzy had a larger, black backpack, and so did Iggy.

  My stomach was grinding, all the doughnuts taking a turn for the worse as I realized these people were actually going to do this. Part of me hadn’t thought this was real. I’d totally expected to come here, meet a bunch of creeps who would blow me off—or worse—and then have to figure this out on my own. The idea that three strangers, grown-ups, would join me and help make this happen—it was a lot to take in. Of course, they hadn’t saved anyone yet, and, I reminded myself, promises were easy to make. And even easier to break.

  “You okay?” Iggy frowned at me. But he was blind.

  “How do I know that you’ll help me get my friends out?” My voice sounded like a lost little kid’s, and I made it stronger. “Maybe you’ll rescue Fang and then ditch me.” I stuck my chin up in the air, my lips tight, to show this would be no more than a small glitch. Like, if they’re going to screw me, let’s take the surprise element out of it and just screw me now.

  All three of them turned to really look at me, their faces shocked.

  “How could—we would never ditch you!” the Gasman said.

  “You’re one of us, Phoenix,” Iggy said. “I mean Hawk.”

  Despite obviously itching to hit the sky, Nudge came and sat next to me, putting her hand on my knee. A cold wind whistled through the skeletal building, whipping plastic sheeting around. I wanted to shiver but forced myself not to.

  “Sweetie, I don’t think you understand,” she said. “You’re part of the Flock. You’re not being invited in—you are in. You were a missing piece, and now you’re back, and we’ll never let you go again.” She raised her head, and a thin shaft of moonlight highlighted her tan skin and one brown eye. “Okay, that sounded more stalkery than I meant. But to us you aren’t a stranger, though we haven’t seen you in ten years and you definitely look different.” She smiled. “To us you’re a member of our family.”

  “You don’t even know me!” I said loudly, getting to my feet. This was all getting super sticky, and I felt furious but didn’t know why.

  “That’s the thing about families,” Iggy said. “We don’t have to know you. Hell, we don’t even have to like you. But you’re in the Flock anyway.”

  “Just like that,” I sneered.

  “Just like that,” Gazzy agreed.

  I sat down abruptly again and reached for a bottle of juice. It was slick and sugary in my throat, chasing down the last of the doughnuts. My body was burning through all the sugar, eager and ready to fly, but I was still thinking. What Iggy said about families was right; I knew what it was like to make one rather than be born into one. And I knew—really well—that you didn’t have to always like each other. But that word—family—hung in the air, and I had one more question.

  “Did the pris—did Fang really kill some kids?” Was I the possible daughter of a murderer?

  “He may have,” said Nudge calmly. “If he thought it was necessary, he would.”

  “Why would it ever be necessary to kill a bunch of kids?” I cried.

  Nudge’s voice was quiet when she answered. “Because sometimes, death is, in fact, better than life. Only in the most extreme situations. Only when death is… a mercy.” She stood up and shook out her wings, ready to fly. “And you should know that, better than anyone.”

  One last smile and she ran and jumped off the building, a h
undred stories up. Energized by possibilities, sugar, and curiosity, I ran and jumped after her.

  CHAPTER 35

  Max

  The concrete I’d fallen onto was wet and slimy with mold. All I felt was my familiar enemy, pain. Pain in my head, pain from my scraped knees, and big pain in my side where the arms of the claw had definitely popped some staples. What kind of sick asshole would make a big claw to move people? Give me ten minutes alone in a room with them. But first maybe give me ten days of recovery.

  Slowly I stood, refusing to show how much I hurt. One by one, pink, purple, and green floodlights snapped on, making my skin look revolting, like I’d already died and started to rot. Looking up, I saw they made everything look revolting—then I almost gasped in disbelief.

  “Oh, come on!” I shouted, blinking against the pink floodlights shining in my eyes. “This is the Judgment Room? It’s more of a judgment courtyard, isn’t it? You used the stupid claw to bring me here?” I was about thirty meters away from where I’d started, in this separate little block in the prison yard! So the whole claw-grabbing thing had been pointless! Except it had been scary, I’d thought I was going to die, and it’d hurt like almighty hell. Other than that, pointless.

  But, I guess that was the point, wasn’t it? Hurting me and scaring me. These sick, sick assholes. When would I ever stop being surprised by them?

  This courtyard was open to the prison inmates, who were held back by the twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Hundreds of prisoners crowded against the fence, watching eagerly. This was something kind of new, after all. They could see normal, everyday violence in the courtyard. The people mover had promised something different, and man, did it look like McCallum was going to deliver.

  There was an operating table in the courtyard. It wasn’t padded or lined with sterile sheets. It was plain metal, beat-up, with fringes of rust around its edges like it’d decided to grow a beard. It was chained to the ground. It had iron loops welded on it.

  This was looking… not good.

  I did a fast 360, in seconds memorizing the courtyard layout, the one entrance/exit, the high walls, the slimy wet concrete floor. The ceiling was open, which wasn’t saying much, because this whole place still had the thick iron-mesh cover over it. So there’d be no sudden up-and-aways. It felt like a hundred years since the Flock had named that particular maneuver. Since then I’d used it probably a million and a half times. Could not use it now. My wings were still banded, but even if I could use them, I’d never be able to claw my way through that cover. Shit.

  A door I hadn’t noticed before opened in the concrete-block wall. The sad-sack doctor who had helped me earlier entered, carrying a black bag. The green floodlight highlighting him did not improve his looks, turning his gray Ope skin into something even more sinister. When the door closed, it was almost impossible to see where it had been. I glanced into his eyes to see any intent to help me. Instead of sympathy, I saw… anticipation. He set his black bag down on the metal table.

  The constant blare of the vidscreens around the prison yard changed to a horrible, ear-piercing crackling, and then of course McCallum came on, his wide, tan face filling the screen. Because we needed him to make this scene complete.

  “Traitor!” he said with a sneer. For some reason his voice always made me think of oil. Any kind of oil. He just seemed—oily.

  I was still in all kinds of pain, and all I wanted to do was kill some nameless prisoner and lie down on their cot because my cot was too far away. I didn’t even care who it was, at this point, just as long as it emptied up a bed nearby. Nice, I thought to myself, and you were just arguing for us to stop killing one another—what, half an hour ago?

  When I didn’t respond to his accusations of being a traitor, McCallum yelled, “You’re unredeemable! Another piece of human trash!”

  Well, 98 percent human, I thought. I brought one hand up and looked at my fingernails. They were broken and bloody from clawing at the metal arms.

  “For far too long you’ve been flouting the rules here,” McCallum went on. The fat rolls around his eyes showed whiter than his tan cheeks. I noticed his lips were wet. Ew.

  “We’ve given you shelter and food, and how have you repaid us? We’ve tried to rehabilitate you…”

  Oh, they so had not. No one had once tried to rehabilitate me. All they did was let you loose in here with the other criminals, and probably took bets on who would last.

  “For ten years!” McCallum finished.

  My head whipped around, first to look at a single McCallum screen, then at the doctor.

  “Wait—what?” I cried.

  CHAPTER 36

  “The time has come to show you you’re not special! You are not above the law! You’re just a prisoner like anyone else!” McCallum yelled.

  “Okay, right, right,” I said, “but what did you just say? About time?”

  McCallum started to say something else, but then someone off camera seemed to want his attention. He stopped and looked away, then looked straight into the camera, as if he were looking right at me. It was really disturbing, and my mind was reeling.

  “I said we had been trying to rehabilitate you for ten years,” he said, all pompous wind and certainty.

  “No,” I said, my eyes narrowing, filled with purple light. Out of nowhere, a tiny microphone hovered over me on a thin wire. “It has not been ten years!”

  Apparently, I was now being transmitted to him directly, because he leaned closer to the camera and said, “Ten. Years. It’s a long time. A long time to be in prison. A long time to learn the rules. And a very long time to put up with your insolence and bad behavior.”

  No… this was impossible. The green floodlight swirled in circles against the concrete walls, creating a sickening effect. I thought I’d been here… a long four years, maybe? I tried to think back to when I’d first come here… all my memories of this place were kind of hazy, not set sharply in my mind. I put my mouth to my hand, trying not to scream. If I had been here ten years… did Fang have Phoenix? Were they safe?

  “For all of your crimes, you deserve death!” McCallum went on. “For your insurrection, your hundreds of betrayals. You’ve tried to undermine the state, to create more infidels. For these and your many other crimes, you deserve to die. But it would be too easy to simply kill you.” McCallum didn’t seem to notice that I was one second away from turning into a screaming banshee, and it wasn’t because of his words, or the things I was being accused of. I was still stuck on something else.

  Ten years! He must be lying. I swayed on my feet, then quickly righted myself and stood tall, ignoring the floodlights. He was lying about everything—I’d never tried to insurrect here or create infidels. I had no idea what he was talking about. Unexpected tears filled my eyes as I drew sharp, quick breaths in through my fingers. It couldn’t be ten years. Phoenix had been five when we’d been forced to leave her with Rose Simmons, a friend we’d made in what was left of England. To find Rose in that miserable hellhole, the City of the Dead, had been amazing. I hadn’t wanted to leave Phoenix! But Fang could carry me or her. Not both. Not even he could do that, and he was the strongest person I knew.

  I’d been dying. I could barely remember it. I remembered crying, trying not to let Phoenix see my broken wing, the blood…

  “So instead, we’re going to do what we should have done a long time ago,” McCallum said in a silky whisper, as if to get my attention. “We’re going to cut off your wings.”

  CHAPTER 37

  The invisible door opened again and ten armed guards marched in, their boots squelching in the slime.

  “Turn off those lights,” McCallum said. “This is something I want to savor.”

  Something about that flicked some recognition in me, but my mind was still whirling from his ten-years lie (which might be true!) to them wanting to cut off my wings. And then he gives me the gift of ten guards. It was something to focus on. It was something to do.

  I fe
lt like beating the hell out of someone, so this should work out.

  I let my shoulders drop, keeping my hand over my eyes as if I was about to cry. The guards, unsurprisingly, split in two and moved to surround me. I was as tall as most of them but because of my bird DNA I was incredibly lightweight. These guards could have almost a hundred kilos on me.

  I inhaled. McCallum, for once, was quiet.

  From behind my fingers, I glanced out, quickly assessing their weak spots. Holy moly, they weren’t even wearing helmets or shin guards. Years of working in a prison full of Opes that were easily manageable had made these guys soft. Sure, they had stun guns—far more powerful than tasers, one hit from a stun gun and I’d drop like a brick. But they had to get close enough to reach me…

  “Okay, lady, get over to the table,” one gruff voice said.

  I shook my head and sniffled.

  Someone moved closer behind me. With no warning, I suddenly dropped and shot my leg out, sweeping it under his legs. He fell with a satisfying oof, and I stomped on his knee, feeling the break. The joint cracked under my heel, the sound just as loud as McCallum’s stupid voice. He coiled up, screaming in pain.

  Nine stun guns were pulled. I did a handstand, kicking away two guns. They flew through the air and fell with a clatter five meters away.

  Rough hands tried to grab me, but these prison clothes were super loose, making it easy to wiggle away. Two more guards came at me. Springing up, I chopped my hand down in a ridge strike, aiming for one’s gun arm. I heard delicate human arm bones break—so satisfying after thinking about my broken wing, all those years ago (but not ten! Surely not ten!)—and a guard sank to the ground, screaming and holding his arm.

  I hit another guard with a hard palm strike to his nose, breaking it and shoving bone shards toward his brain. He, too, went down, but that one wasn’t moving. That made three in the last eight seconds.

  “Maximum!” McCallum said, sounding like a father. “We all know you can fight! Stop this pointless display—you’re only making it worse for yourself.”