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  “Here we go,” Fang muttered. “You made the mistake of asking Gazzy a bomb question.”

  Gazzy turned to me, his face lighting up. His long, dark blond hair whipped around his face and he tucked it behind his ears, only to have it slip free again seconds later. “In some ways, it’s a basic IED—improvised explosive device,” he said. “They can be anything from little smoke bombs—I love those, been experimenting with colors—to, like, honking big things that can blow a hole in a city, or reach down to a subway, or take out a tall building.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, deciding I hadn’t really wanted to know that information. I should’ve been more specific—Do we have a plan??? What are we doing??? We couldn’t keep circling forever—for one thing, big dark gray clouds were sliding in below us. Nudge pointed downward and we slowly sank through them so we could still see the prison. The clouds were heavy and full of water—they left me damp, my feathers beaded with droplets.

  A rumble of thunder sent vibrations through my body like I was sitting on trolley tracks, and I wondered if this was dangerous. Sometimes the clouds over the City of the Dead kind of leaked, but there usually wasn’t thunder. Should I be worried? I was holding a bomb beneath a gathering storm. Glancing at the others, I saw that they were intent on what was happening below.

  Three helicopters hovered above the metal cage. From this far up, the flickering lights of the vidscreens looked like lightning bouncing around a big courtyard. Rain began to fall, quickly turning into fat, hard drops pelting painfully against my face.

  “Gather in!” Nudge shouted, just as another rolling drum of thunder echoed through my chest and stomach. Beneath the clouds, the wind whipped against us, pushing us in all directions. I tried hard to stay close to the others. My bomb was getting wet. Was that bad?

  Iggy flew near me. “That’s the Flock for ya,” he said, making himself heard above the storm. “We do great, necessary, exciting things. But you know…” he shrugged. “We sorta play with death a lot.”

  Oh, awesome.

  CHAPTER 69

  “Drop lower,” Gazzy directed, his hair plastered against his face. He brushed it away with one impatient hand.

  “Try to stay above and behind the choppers,” Nudge added.

  “Do we have a plan?” I couldn’t help asking, then wanted to smack myself.

  “Yeah,” Iggy said, sounding surprised. “We’re here to rescue Max!”

  I pressed my lips together, but the words escaped anyway. “Like… more of a plan?”

  Fang answered tightly: “We don’t have numbered diagrams. We have to take in all the factors involved in the moment, including stuff like storms, which we couldn’t predict.”

  I turned a bit so he wouldn’t see the hurt on my face. He was short-tempered, irritated with me. No more questions, I told myself. Just relax and go with the flow.

  Gazzy and Nudge were talking, nodding, moving their hands in the air.

  We were all sopping wet. I was chilly, shivering, the heat of flying washed away by this goddamn rain that kept getting in my eyes. I suddenly remembered celebrating Clete’s made-up birthday last year. It’d been almost cozy, and I’d stolen a whole cake from a bakery way down the Main Line, where they didn’t know me, wouldn’t watch me the second I walked in.

  Everything had been so much simpler, then. I remember how I thought if I ever found my parents that everything would be okay. Not that I’d have one fly me directly into a lightning storm and yell at me while we attempted to jailbreak the other one.

  Another bout of muscle-clenching shivering swept over me, and I thought, You know what? To hell with this! I’d never been quiet or obedient in my whole life! The Flock might do great, exciting things and play with death a lot, but that wasn’t exactly big news in my world. I’d been playing with death since I was left behind as a child, and the reason I survived wasn’t because someone was looking out for me. It was because I was calling the shots myself. It was time for Hawk to be Hawk.

  “Look!” I said loudly, and four heads turned. “Either we’re going down or we’re not! We don’t have one stinking idea of the sitch down there or ‘all the factors involved in the moment, including stuff like storms’!” I used my nastiest voice when I quoted Fang, and instantly saw his face go flat with anger. Well, tough shit. I’ve been mad a few times in my life, too, and it hadn’t killed me yet.

  “We’re in the middle of the freaking goddamn ocean, there’s a crazy freak show happening in the prison below us,” I shouted, “and I’m holding a goddamn bomb in a goddamn paper bag, and that paper bag is wet!”

  To emphasize this, I jerked it out in front of me. The wet bag ripped, the bomb dropped out, and it fell like, well, like a bomb.

  “Frick!” I hissed and started to dive after it, but Nudge grabbed my backpack.

  “Stay up here!” she ordered.

  “It might not explode,” Gazzy said, lying through his teeth. “I mean, it would need a detona—”

  CRACK!

  Lightning and thunder happened at the same instant, almost blowing my eardrums out, making every hair I had stand up straight.

  Directly below us, one of the choppers exploded into a fireball, its pieces scattering like confetti. At the exact same instant, lightning hit the prison, blasting a hole in the heavy metal cage. There was another huge explosion, this one catching a second chopper in its wake, snapping off its rotors, making it spin downward in crazy circles. It hit the rocks of the prison island, its larger pieces sliding into the water, fuel bubbling up to burn on the surface.

  The explosions barely reached us, though we felt the shockwave five kilometers up. It was the nearby lightning strike that had cooked our brains.

  “Tha wa inshting,” Gazzy said, his words slurred. I could barely hear him, could barely remember to move my wings to stay in the air.

  Dazed, I looked around at the others. Everyone’s hair was standing up, including Nudge’s tight curls. I felt like I might barf—my ears were ringing and my vision had a blue flash burn from the lightning. The rain pouring down on us felt really good right now but it also made our entire bodies into living conductors.

  “What happened?” I said when I could speak.

  “We almost got hit by lightning,” Fang said, looking pale and disheveled. “And your bomb hit a chopper right when the lightning did, so—”

  “Everything go boom,” Iggy said. “But guys—Max is down there.”

  “Well,” Fang said, eyeing me. “We didn’t have a plan, but you just created one hell of a distraction. Let’s hope it didn’t kill your mother.”

  CHAPTER 70

  “Max!” Fang cried, and tucked his wings back, face pointing downward. He went through the air like an arrow, dropping incredibly fast, like I’d seen Ridley do.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, trying to see through the billows of smoke being shot through by rain as he disappeared into them. I had just blown up like half the prison, two choppers, and who knew how many people—including Max. I might have just exploded Max. Who might be my mother. Who the Flock had looked for for ten years.

  “Good one with the paper bags, Gaz,” Iggy said angrily, and shot downward after Fang.

  “Oh, like I knew it was going to rain!” Gazzy yelled after him. He looked at me. “It wasn’t your fault. I put them in the goddamn paper bags. Trying to go plastic-free, the environment, you know.” Then he was gone, too, and Nudge and I hovered beneath the roiling, blackening clouds. She said nothing, didn’t even look at me before going after her friends, her family, the Flock—leaving me up here alone.

  Shit. I had nowhere to run, had no idea where we were except, you know, ocean. The only land was beneath me, and I’d set most of it on fire. With no options, I tucked my wings back, angled my head down, and got ready to plummet fast, from this high up, for the first time in my life.

  BOOM!

  Light flashed so bright it hurt, and I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or shut anymore. I was plummeting, but not like I
’d planned. I was in a free fall, my legs, arms, and wings spinning out of control. There should have been wind rushing in my ears, but I heard nothing. My vision was gone. My hearing was gone. My body wasn’t responding to what I told it to do. I was a rock, falling, falling, falling.

  Hitting the water felt like I’d been slammed down onto a brick. It knocked the wind out of me, and panicking, I gulped in a big mouthful of salty water. I’d landed in the ocean, but I was still falling, still going downward when life was the other direction.

  Kid, you’re gonna die.

  I put my hand over my mouth. I tried to see something, anything. Zigzagging sparkles of light danced through my vision, but everything was going darker and darker green. I couldn’t breathe, and I’d never learned how to swim. The City of the Dead didn’t exactly have any bodies of water clean enough to put your own into.

  Crap, crap, crap, Hawk, get it together. Get it together or die.

  NOW, RIGHT NOW!

  Carefully I spit out the water in my mouth. I knew I was going to puke but tried to hold it down. Pulling my wings in tight, I turned and spun until I saw water that was lighter. Lighter water meant sky. I’d seen turtles swim in the meat market, and I imitated them, moving my arms and legs. I needed air.

  Was the water lighter? How long was this gonna take? I didn’t have that much time! My lungs were about to explode. Blue light shimmered inside my head. Another few seconds and I would just… let water in…

  When my head popped out the water, I couldn’t believe it. It was still raining, the sky still the color of the worst bruise I’d ever had. I sucked in air, threw up, sucked in more air. When my head cleared, I remembered the endless flight here, the bomb, the prison, the Flock diving down to see if Max was still alive.

  They’d left me. I guessed I’d been hit by lightning? My whole right side burned. I’d thought being numb and unable to control my body sucked, but feeling the pain wasn’t much better. Now I was bobbing in the wide expanse of the ocean, alone. The Flock had no idea where I was. Which meant I had to find them.

  Turns out, once something has been set on fire, it’s pretty easy to spot again. Spirals of white and gray smoke twisted upward from the prison, and screams reached me across the water.

  Once I’d seen an angry Ope push a mangy dog into an open canal. The dog had swum to the other side, climbed out, then given the Ope a look that promised an infectious chomp the next time they met.

  I remembered how the dog had swum, head above water, four paws paddling.

  I couldn’t survive here on my own—and I didn’t want to.

  I wanted to be one of the Flock.

  I hoped I hadn’t killed Max.

  I started paddling toward the prison.

  CHAPTER 71

  Max

  Rain did not help my hanging-in-a-net situation. I could barely move, and now I was soaking wet. These had been the longest, weirdest couple of days I’d had in a while, and I’m including that time when ill-placed food dye had made us all crap purple for a week.

  Rain, of course, did not slow down McCallum. “This person”—he flashed a picture of me on the screen, and I still looked like shit—“has broken every rule our city has! She has assaulted helpless Opes! She has written anti-government graffiti all over our beautiful community! She has assaulted government officials! She has said that all government officials should be put to death!”

  Okay, that one I could get behind. The others had been shown with doctored footage of me supposedly doing all those crappy things. I mean, I would never assault helpless Opes! Those people had enough problems!

  A certain, all-too-familiar chop chop chop sound made me look up. Several helicopters had joined our party, which meant that McCallum had his icy heart set on getting me out of here. No doubt he would move me to a different hidden hell-hole where he could cut off my wings without anyone watching. Like, who has more than one hidden hell-hole? How many does he need, for god’s sake?

  I was… just so tired. How long had I been fighting? How much longer was I supposed to fight? What did it say about my life that my happiest years had been spent in an underground bunker during a nuclear winter?

  I missed the Flock with a fierce, sudden urgency. I missed Fang so much. And if my arms couldn’t hold Phoenix again before I died, then even dying would be pointless. I know I’m strong, and I’d proved it countless times, but sometimes even I get tired and beat down.

  Suddenly all the vidscreens crackled behind me. There was a blur of numbers and then that same reporter from before was on the screen. To my horror, she showed a close-up of me swinging slowly in the hanging net! I saw my face, battered and bruised, my eyes widening, appalled. I had been a people’s hero, once upon a time! Now I looked like—a pathetic loser. Not strong. Not a fighter. And again, where the hell was this goddamn camera???

  Holding on to the net with wet, clawlike hands, I pulled myself painfully to a stand. The me on the vidscreen did the same thing, looking less like a loser, more like a fighter—one that still had some fight left in her.

  “This is the nightmare that McCallum is so afraid of!” the reporter said. “Maximum Ride has never assaulted a helpless Ope! She has only ever tried to help people find freedom! Freedom from tyrants like McCall—”

  Then McCallum was back, a bit tilted at first, then quickly straightened. His face was almost purple with rage. “Do not listen to anything that traitor says!” he bellowed. “She will be dealt with! And so will Maximum Ride!”

  The view of the vidscreen turned away from McCallum, up into the pouring rain to focus on the armed helicopters. One of them had just dropped a rope that reached the top of the wire cage. A man in an orange flak suit started descending. Then a bulky package dropped right past him from higher in the sky. I turned from the screen back to real life as the package fell through the bars and rolled a good twenty meters away.

  Huh, I thought dazedly. That looks just like one of Gazzy’s—muscle memory instantly curled me into a tight ball, face and head down, back to the bomb, and then there was a huge crack of thunder and a blinding flash. A second later, an explosion blew my net sideways, slamming me against the wall. Still I kept curled tightly, hands over my ears, eyes shut. I’d lived with the Gasman too many years to get exploded like an amateur.

  Familiar smells of ozone from lightning, that weird, plasticky smell of C-something, and hot metal almost cheered me up. Recognizing the scent of fire as I hit the wall a second time, I stuck my hand through the net, scrabbling for anything to cling to. There was a rough plaster window ledge and I grabbed it, holding myself still so I could see what the hell was going on.

  There was a smallish crater in the ground of the courtyard, maybe a bit less than six meters across? Every window on this wall of the prison was broken, every vidscreen shattered. Most of the inmates were flattened, some holding their ears and moaning, blood coming from in between their fingers. I looked up: the lightning had ripped a big hole in the cage bars, and I could see rainclouds.

  That had been a Gazzy bomb for sure, I thought, scanning the skies. He must be alive! Then the clouds parted and I… I saw… four… four bird-people. Coming down from the heavens for me.

  CHAPTER 72

  I was hallucinating. The bomb, the lightning—they’d knocked my brain sideways. Now I was hallucinating, seeing the only things I would ever want to see again.

  “Max!”

  That was Fang’s voice. Those were Fang’s wings. Even without the sun to make them shine, I’d recognize those black wings anywhere. This was Fang’s face, visibly older, inches from mine, outside the net. Iggy, then Nudge flew down. The three of them supported the net while Gazzy tried to unhook it. I didn’t know how much time we had—not everything had been destroyed. The warden and the doctor had been in the courtyard, but I couldn’t see their bodies now.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” I breathed, and then Fang gently put two fingers through the net and stroked my cheek.

  I almost fell apart. This
was a dream. A dream, and I would wake up soon, be in my rotten cell, and I just couldn’t stand it—

  “I love you,” Fang whispered. Hot tears welled in my eyes. “I never stopped looking for you. I’m so glad we found you.”

  Putting my mouth over my hand, I almost doubled over with happiness, with joy, and with fear that this somehow wasn’t real. I realized I was gasping with sobs, my chest aching. “Please be real,” I choked out.

  CHAPTER 73

  Hawk

  Swimming is so forking hard, so much harder than flying. I saw the prison rock and paddled as hard as I could, but it was taking forever to draw close to the prison. Waves kept breaking over me, the waves that had looked so pretty from above. Now I hated them. In fact, I hated water. I never wanted to see another ocean.

  “Ouch!” My paddling foot had hit something hard. A rock! The water was getting shallower. Then my other foot felt one, and soon there were enough rocks to walk over, all the way. They were slippery and I almost got my foot caught between two of them, but at least waves were only coming up to my waist instead of over my head. At last I was at the prison, standing on the tiny bit of earth that surrounded it. This must be the huge, boring backside of the main building. I stood for a minute, getting my balance, shaking water off my feathers and out of my ears—for whatever good that did, it was still pouring. But I needed to buy myself some time, time to think of what to do.

  Had the Flock left without me? Was I abandoned—again? Should I jump into the action in the prison? Had they already rescued Max? Or… had they found Max’s body? The one I’d dropped a bomb on. Maybe Fang and the others had found her that way, and decided they were all better off without me blowing up people by accident.