Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports Read online

  “For example,” said Nudge.

  “What are we gonna do here?” Ari asked. The rest of us were so slender and lithe, thanks to our birdlike bones, that Ari seemed especially hulking and clunky in comparison. Now he loomed over us in the dark as we took our first look at the Itex British headquarters.

  Fittingly, the building used to be a prison. And boy, had the Brits cornered the market on dank and gloomy. Itex headquarters had an unmistakable eau de prison about it—looming, blocklike rectangular buildings made of dirty brown brick.

  If the leader of Itex is reading this right now, I have two words for you: seasonal plantings.

  The entire thing was surrounded by an electrified chain-link fence at least twelve feet high, topped with razor wire, in case getting repeatedly shocked with five thousand volts wasn’t enough of a deterrent. And okay, if you’re totally nuts, maybe it wouldn’t be.

  Of course, we were just going to fly over it anyway.

  I heard Angel swallow in the quiet night and looked down at her. Her face was unusually pale, her eyes wide.

  “What’s up?” I asked her, going on alert.

  She swallowed again and reached for my hand. I squeezed hers and knelt down to her level.

  “I can feel thoughts and stuff coming from inside,” she said brokenly. “From the whitecoats and also, like, minds without bodies.”

  Brains on a Stick, I thought.

  “They’re thinking awful stuff,” Angel went on. “They’re really bad. Like, evil. They want to do their plan and they don’t care what they have to do to make it happen. They don’t mind killing people. Or animals.”

  Or any combination thereof, I thought.

  “How about other bird kids?” I asked. “Other recombinant life-forms, Erasers?”

  She shook her head, her curls shining in the moonlight. “They’re all dead. They killed them all.”

  73

  So of course we had to get in there! I mean, why would we pass up a chance to break into a place where delusional mass murderers were targeting creatures just like us? What would be the fun of avoiding that situation?

  “Do we really have to go in there?” Nudge asked. “’Cause, I mean, if we don’t actually have to, then I’d rather not. I’d rather kick back somewhere.”

  I smiled at her and tried to smooth her unruly brown hair. “You and me both, kid. But I have this whole saving-the-world gig, and I kind of have to do this. You with me?”

  She nodded, not looking happy, then put a fierce expression on. “I’m ready. Let’s bust this place up!”

  “Me too!” said Angel. “Those people are really evil. They shouldn’t be allowed to hurt anyone else. We have to fix it so they can’t.”

  “We have to end this now, here!” Ari said.

  “That’s right!” I said, holding my fist out to tap, like we did at bedtime. “We’re gonna rain fire on this place! When we’re done, there’ll just be a greasy spot!”

  Remember the Hydra, Max?

  I almost jumped. Would I ever get used to an uninvited Voice inside my head? My guess at this point was no.

  Hydra, Hydra, I thought. Sounds like a...sprinkler?

  No. The Lernaean Hydra, one of the labors of Heracles. Every time Heracles cut off a head, two grew back in its place.

  Oh. That. Yeah, I saw a cartoon about it once. What about it?

  Think it through, Max, said the Voice. It’ll come to you.

  I frowned suspiciously. Is this one of those metaphor things? Would it kill you to just come out and tell me?

  Silence.

  Of course.

  “Max?” Angel asked.

  I held up a finger. “One sec. Voice imparting unnecessary knowledge.”

  Total flopped down in the grass and rested his head on his front paws.

  Okay. Hydra, I thought. I remembered the cartoon I had seen, where a big muscular mouse dressed in a lion skin had been trying to lop catlike heads off this giant dragon thing.

  But I wasn’t getting the connection.

  Oh, wait. A head got cut off, and two grew back in its place.

  We were planning to destroy this Itex headquarters. Did that mean if we destroyed it, two would grow back in its place? Or, like, two others would become more powerful? Hmm.

  The Hydra itself must be killed, Max. The whole thing at once. This is just one head. Find the body and kill it.

  I thought. I remembered the map I had glimpsed through an open door back at the School, when Ari had been taking me around. It was a map of the world. Almost every country had had an Itex symbol somewhere on it, and many had had smaller stars as well.

  Because I’m smarter than the average recombinant bear, I realized that we needed to check out some of the other Itex branches, in other countries, to find the heart of the beast. Thanks a lot, Voice, I thought a little sarcastically, to no reply. Will you make up your mind about just where the heck we’re supposed to be going? God, I was so tired. A world saver’s work is never done.

  I hunkered down next to the hedge and motioned everyone closer.

  “Guys, I do believe that France is calling our names.”

  Nudge frowned. “They’re yelling for flying bird kids?”

  “Yes.” I stood up and held out my arms for Total. He jumped up, and I zipped him into my jacket. “Does anyone know any French?”

  “I know how to ask for a spunky Chablis,” said Total, his voice somewhat muffled. I unfolded my wings and stretched them out, ready to take off.

  “I know some Spanish,” said Nudge. “Cerrado and abierto. Stuff like that.”

  “That’ll be good in Spain. In France, I guess we’ll find out if Angel can read minds in French.”

  Angel shook out her wings, looking intrigued. “I don’t know,” she said. “But you know what? I want some pastry while we’re there.”

  “Ooh, I second that emotion,” said Total.

  I stifled a response—had Madame Tussauds taught them nothing?—and took off into the chilly night, kind of feeling like Harry Potter escaping from the Dursleys. Except in our world, Dursleys were everywhere, were heavily funded, and had a strong scientific bent.

  74

  Los Angeles, gangbangers, huh!

  “If they’re not the Crips or the Bloods, does that mean they’re the Cruds?” Iggy asked in all seriousness.

  “Shh!” Fang told him. “Keep it down! Don’t throw gas on this particular fire, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Iggy, but Gazzy chuckled and slapped him a high five.

  “Besides, they’re the Ghosts,” Fang reminded him. “They have it on all their jackets.”

  “Oh, I must have missed that,” Iggy said sarcastically, and Fang mentally smacked his forehead.

  “Yo,” someone said, and he spun to see a guy named Keez walking toward them. That morning they’d been lying low in an empty lot in east LA, and they’d suddenly been surrounded by a big gang. Literally a street gang: the Ghosts. They’d all tensed to fight, but one of the gang, Keez, had recognized Fang, Iggy, and Gazzy from the news. He’d also been reading Fang’s blog. The gang controlled this part of the city, and Keez had offered them a safe house.

  Now he nodded at Fang. “This way, dude.”

  “We’re famous,” Iggy whispered, so low that Fang could barely hear him.

  “So’s swine flu,” Fang whispered back.

  They followed Keez to an abandoned building in the middle of a scary, decrepit block. People eyed them curiously, but with a simple hand motion from Keez, they looked away.

  “I want a Ghosts jacket,” the Gasman whispered to Fang. Fang felt the Gasman’s hand start to reach for his, then drop. Since they’d split, the Gasman had been trying to be super tough. Fang had to remind himself that he was just a little kid. Max, though she was about the toughest person Fang had ever met, was weirdly good with all the mom stuff, putting bandages on, calming the kids down when they had bad dreams. He’d never realized how much extra work that took.

  As they followed Keez
up some broken brownstone steps, Fang reached out and took the Gasman’s hand. The kid looked up at him, surprised, but then Fang felt the small hand tighten around his. So he’d done the right thing.

  Two big guys were standing guard at the front door, but a nod from Keez made them step aside. Inside it was a lot like that burned-out crack house Max and Fang had found in DC, only with less cozy charm. But it was relatively safe and hidden, and those were two of his favorite things.

  “Crash here.” Keez motioned them into a shell of a room that looked as if one of Iggy’s bigger experiments had exploded in it not long ago.

  “Cool. Thanks, man,” Fang said. Then he, Iggy, and the Gasman collapsed on the floor. It was time for Fang to step up and make a plan.

  75

  “This is your plan?” Iggy’s voice held disbelief.

  “Yep. Grab your backpack.”

  The Gasman didn’t say anything, but Fang wondered if he was wishing he’d decided to go with Max. The first day it had seemed like an adventure. Now it was starting to seem just...painful. But there was no way Fang was going back—until Max ditched the cretin.

  The offices of People magazine were on about four floors of a colossal building in downtown LA. Fang was sure that if Angel were here, it would be no problem for them to see the president of the whole company and convince him to publish an entire special issue about Itex and their evil ways.

  But he was Fang, and he could work his own wiles. He held up a bag of deli sandwiches, and the front guard signed them in. “Delivery elevators in the back,” he said in a bored voice.

  “Let’s take the stairs,” Gazzy whispered.

  “We’re going to the twenty-seventh floor,” Fang whispered back.

  Basically, stepping into the elevator felt like volunteering for psychic trauma. It was small, enclosed, and full of other people, all of them better dressed and significantly more hygienic than the bird kids.

  On the twenty-seventh floor, they practically leaped out of the elevators into a designer reception area bustling with people. Fang held on to his bag and approached the main desk.

  A guy in his early twenties with mod rectangular glasses looked at them as though they were three scruffy homeless children.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I need to speak to your top reporter,” Fang said coolly. “I have a story with worldwide implications. You print what I tell you, and this magazine will go down in history.”

  The reception guy was unimpressed. “Do you have an appointment? With anyone?”

  Of course not. That would require a level of forethought that Fang hadn’t mastered yet. He felt the deli bag had been a master touch. “I just need to speak to someone, right now.”

  The guy sneered. “I don’t think so.”

  “If they find out you didn’t let me talk to someone, you’ll get canned so fast you’ll feel like tuna.”

  That was when the guy pressed the button for security.

  Fang tapped Iggy’s hand twice. “Let’s go! Now!”

  76

  Two burly security guards picked up their pace as soon as they saw Fang, Iggy, and Gazzy race toward the stairwell. Fang knew that when someone was chasing you, you never got on the elevator, twenty-seven floors up or no. They could lock you between floors, be waiting for you. You always took the stairs.

  Fang yanked the door open, and the three of them flung themselves downward, four steps at a time. They pushed past startled employees and almost collided with someone delivering sandwiches. Behind them, they heard stairwell doors being opened and security guards yelling. On one floor, the door opened right as they passed, and Fang felt someone take a swipe at his jacket. He continued to leap downward, keeping track of Iggy and the Gasman out of the corners of his eyes. Unfortunately, there were no windows in the stairwell that they could escape through.

  The stairs felt endless and went back and forth so tightly that Fang started to feel seasick. Keep it together, he told himself. Keep it together. You’ve got a little kid and a blind guy depending on you.

  “Okay, about to reach bottom!” Fang alerted Iggy after endless minutes. “Eight more steps, then a hard left!”

  “Gotcha,” said Iggy.

  Finally they reached bottom. If they could just make it out the front doors...

  There were eight security guards waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Fang whirled to head back upstairs, but the door closest to them opened, and four more guards started thundering toward them. The three bird kids bolted into the lobby, trying to break through the line of guards.

  Unsuccessfully.

  “We’re leaving!” Fang snarled, but a guard had the back of his jacket and his belt loop. He marched Fang to the big glass doors, muscled them open, and tossed Fang down the building’s front steps.

  “You don’t weigh nothin’!” he said in surprise.

  “Don’t come back!” said another guard.

  Iggy and the Gasman landed on the sidewalk next to Fang, and they quickly scrambled to their feet. After some of the situations they’d been in, getting thrown onto the sidewalk like trash wasn’t that bad, but it meant that Fang’s big plan had bombed. He dusted off his pants, opened the deli bag, and passed out squashed sandwiches as they made their way back to the safe house. WWMD? Fang wondered. What would Max do? Besides let a murderous creep into their lives, that is.

  “No go, eh?” Keez was honing a switchblade on a spinning metal wheel.

  “Nope.”

  “You shoulda whooshed out those wings, man,” he said. “I saw you guys on the news once. You got them wicked wings, right? That woulda done it for sure.”

  “Uh, I didn’t want to resort to cheap tricks,” Fang muttered. Plus, he hadn’t thought of it. Keez was right. That would have worked like a charm. Shoot.

  On to Plan...H?

  77

  “The plan is hot dogs?” said the Gasman, enthusiastically wolfing down his second one. “I like this plan!”

  Fang did a quick 360, but this section of El Prado had only the usual assortment of dealers, homeless people, and Ghosts. Nothing too threatening.

  “The plan is not hot dogs,” Fang said, wiping his fingers on his jeans. “We’re just killing time till the real plan falls into place.” Of course, there was no real plan—yet. But Fang was the leader of this particular flock, and leaders always had to look confident, even when they were blowing smoke. Another lesson he’d learned from Max.

  “All right, my man,” Keez said to the hot-dog vendor, and shook his hand. Fang gathered that Keez had just been comped about a dozen hot dogs in return for the vendor’s safety on this street. Interesting.

  Iggy was halfway through his fourth hot dog when he suddenly froze in midchew. Fang watched his face alertly.

  “What?” he said.

  “Crud,” Iggy said, throwing down his hot dog. “Flyboys.”

  “You guys scatter!” Fang told Keez quickly. “We’ve got trouble, but they’re only after us.”

  “How do they keep finding us?” the Gasman wailed, then stuffed the rest of his hot dog into his mouth.

  “We’ll stay!” Keez said, pulling out his cell phone.

  “No, man, you don’t under—” was as far as Fang got before he heard the buzzing, and then it was too late.

  There were about eighty of them, and they swarmed above the roof of a nearby building like a cloud of wasps.

  “What the heck is that?” said Keez. Already other Ghosts were pouring out of buildings, running up the street.

  “Robots,” Fang said tersely, and unfolded his wings. “You guys should split.”

  He heard a couple of gasps, and one Ghost said, “Holy Mother.”

  “We’re staying,” said Keez, and he pulled out his switchblade. He waved his arms at his troops, yelling over the increasing noise. “Fan out!”

  “Eighty Flyboys—coming from ten o’clock,” Fang told Iggy. Iggy and the Gasman both snapped out their wings, causing more indrawn breaths and muttered exclamatio
ns. “On the ground, the Ghosts can help. We’ll do what we can from the air.”

  Iggy nodded his understanding, and then Keez said, “Here!” and pressed a long crowbar into Iggy’s hands. Iggy grinned and threw himself skyward.

  One of his wings brushed a Ghost on the downswing, and the Ghost ducked, looking astonished.

  Fang judged they had about four seconds before impact. “They’re metal based,” he said quickly. “Covered with skin. Knives won’t do squat. Pipes and baseball bats would be better.”

  “Bats we got,” said Keez, handing Fang one. “And we got something else too.” Fang saw that three Ghosts had run up with what looked like a bazooka, maybe five feet long. There was no time to ask where they’d gotten that. Fang ran a few steps and leaped into the air, hoping to lead the Flyboys away from the gang that had protected him.

  His heart pounding, blood roaring in his ears, Fang flew straight at the cloud of Flyboys.

  78

  “We will destroy you,” the Flyboys droned. “You have no escape.”

  That was the most imaginative, threatening thing the whitecoats had programmed these ’droids to say? “Talk about lame,” Fang muttered. Mechanical heads swiveled, laser-red eyes locked on to him, and a bunch of the robots split away from the main group to face him down.

  Fang readied his aluminum baseball bat. A sudden whining, whistling sound made him backpedal hard. Fifty feet away, a ground-to-air missile flew directly into the mass of Flyboys. Its aim was off and it exploded too late, above them. But it still blasted about fifteen metallic heads off, and Fang had a moment to hope that the Gasman had enjoyed the display.

  Then everything went into fight speed: super slow and super fast at the same time. Fang raced among the Flyboys and started swinging, feeling the numbing shock of hitting Flyboy metal as hard as he could. Within a minute he discovered that hitting a shoulder at a certain angle would pop an arm out of joint, and hitting a head sideways from one direction and then quickly downward would often snap it clean off.