Hawk Read online

  “Rain! Focus!” I said sternly, shaking her shoulder a tiny bit. Her fluffy, cloudlike hair waved back and forth, and that was when I saw it: a tiny, green blinking light behind her ear. I moved her hair aside and looked at it closer. I had just reached out a fingernail to see if I could scrape it off when Clete stopped me.

  “Don’t!” he whispered, pushing my hand away. “I think it’s a parietal stimulator.”

  “Uh-huh and what now?” I asked.

  “I think these probes go deep into their brains. Moke is in another world—not even here, just like Rain. I don’t think they know that Calypso is—gone. And they definitely don’t know that we’re here.”

  “Well, shit!” I said.

  “We can’t rescue them like this,” Clete went on quietly. “They wouldn’t be able to come with us—they’re tripping, basically. Maybe on Rainbow.”

  Rainbow was a street drug. Not every Ope liked it, but the ones who did were nuts. “Goddamnit,” I said, my mind racing ahead for possible options.

  “Should we… try to get Calypso?” I asked. “Get her body out of here?” I took a deep breath and tried to swallow the thought. Until this moment I hadn’t let myself even stand next to the idea. Now, with Rain and Moke tripping happily, I had to face the worst thing I could think of: losing Calypso… and maybe having to leave her dead body behind for the lab to get rid of, thrown out with the rest of the trash.

  Moving soundlessly, Clete and I scooched across the chilly floor to where Calypso hung by her left hand, the rest of her crumpled on the ground. Seeing her bare feet shot a dart into my heart. I’d washed these little feet, warmed them, found shoes for them, and pushed them out of my face while sleeping. Now all that was over. My eyes felt hot, my tongue was thick, and my brain was shrieking. I reached out and touched her wristband. Holy mud, it looked like it had been soldered onto her. Who would do that to a… freak?

  The four little antennas growing on her back made her a lab rat. Literally something—not someone—to be experimented on. This was so ugly. I sat back on my heels for a second, trying not to let my thoughts and feelings run away with me. Trying to think of a way to get her out of here. Wondering if Rain and Moke had a chance, with their pari—whatevers glowing green behind their ears. I frowned. I pushed aside the wild red tangle of Calypso’s hair. She had one, too.

  “Can we take her?” I mouthed to Clete. He shook his head slowly.

  “Almost certainly has a tracker,” he whispered.

  Then Calypso opened her eyes, and I almost screamed.

  CHAPTER 30

  Clete had me in a death grip, his fingers digging into my shoulder more deeply than Ridley’s talons ever had. I didn’t know if he was doing it to stop me from screaming, or himself, but either way, it worked. I took a deep breath, forced myself to look back into Calypso’s gaze, into her new eyes.

  “Calypso?” I whispered, wondering if she was still in there. I tried to lift her, get her into a more comfortable position, but she only collapsed against me.

  Her mosaic eyes focused on something in another world, and my heart sank. She wasn’t reacting to her name, or my voice, at all.

  “I had an orange once,” she murmured, smiling at nothing. Then she turned her head, as if in response to someone else talking. “No. I don’t know. That’s a pretty shirt. Hmmm.” Her voice was quiet and calm and she tapped her index finger against her thumb. No idea why.

  I tried to at least stand her up, so she wouldn’t be hanging, but she sagged again immediately and said, “A pond!”

  Clete put his hand out and tugged my shirt, telling me that we needed to go. I looked at him helplessly. How could we leave without them? How could we save our family?

  He tilted his head slightly and whispered into my ear. “We’ll go back home. Come up with another plan. I need to research their probes.”

  I nodded, though I hated it. I tucked Calypso’s hair behind her ear, and eased her body back so that she was leaning against the wall. It was the least I could do… the only thing I could do.

  We had no trouble retracing our steps—we both could map places in our minds and remember them. I could also always tell if I was facing north, south, or whatever, but Clete couldn’t. He just committed every turn to memory, then did it in reverse.

  When we were back in the laundry room, it all started to feel like a dream. Nightmare, I mean. Had we really gotten into the Labs? Had we seen those awful things, seen the zombies of our family? Here, with the heat and steam and familiar smells, the same Opes shuffling in, getting their mops and brooms—it was so ordinary and everyday that, if I tried, I could probably talk myself into believing I’d hallucinated it all. Maybe something I ate had been laced with Rainbow. I could almost believe it.

  Wanted so bad to believe it.

  CHAPTER 31

  Clete and I finished at the laundry and started to head back to the Children’s Home. We were still staying there, still calling it home. Nobody had come for us, which must mean that three kids had been enough for—whatever they were doing, with the blinking green lights and the Rainbow effect. Holy mother.

  “We’d need a way to carry them,” Clete said. “Like on a gurney. We’d have to… maybe blowtorch their bracelets off. But the entire band will get really hot and it’ll hurt them. How do we use a blowtorch and not burn them to a crisp?”

  I didn’t have a response, but I knew Clete didn’t really need one, either. He was thinking out loud, coming up with plans and tweaking them as he went. A shouting voice interrupted his thoughts, and mine.

  “Phoenix!”

  I looked at Clete with an oh, god, not this again look. Clete gave a tired, sad bit of a smile, and I waved at him to go on without me. He was exhausted, and my day couldn’t get any worse. A street gang had carved up my face, marking me. My family was in chains and possibly altered for life. There was nothing a child killer who claimed to be my father could say that could shock me more than what I’d seen in the Labs.

  “Go on, get some sleep,” I said to Clete and he continued on the path toward the Children’s Home.

  The tiny window opening into the hall was enough for the criminal to see us—if he was standing on his chair, on his bed.

  “Phoenix!” he whispered. I could see only his eyes and eyebrows and the top of his head.

  “My name is Hawk!” I whispered harshly back.

  “Okay, Hawk,” the prisoner said patiently. “Listen. I’m your Dad-man. Don’t you remember me? You and me and your mom—we were always together.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Sure we were, creep. Leave me alone!”

  “Hawk! Wait. I’ve been looking for you for years!”

  “Okay,” I said. “Prove it. Tell me something about myself. Anything.”

  “You have wings,” he said, and I froze in place. “They’re dark brown with tan undersides—more like your mom’s than mine. But you have a spray of black feathers around your shoulders—so black that when they’re in the sun, they look iridescent.”

  I bet my own gang couldn’t have described my wings so well.

  “I know because I’m Dad-man,” he said, apparently reading my mind. “I was there when you were born.”

  “Were you there when I was left by myself on the street?” I asked, practically spitting.

  “Yeah, I was,” he said, sounding surprised. “But you weren’t left on your own—a good family friend, Rose, was ten meters away from coming to get you. We didn’t leave till we knew she was super close.”

  “No one came and got me,” I said, putting all the meanness I could into my voice. “I was left by myself on a street corner. I was a little kid.”

  “Rose was almost there,” the murderer said more strongly. “We saw her! She was ten meters away!”

  I sighed. “You know what? I’m tired and depressed and not going to argue with a child killer.” Once again I turned to go, but he said, “Why are you depressed?” Almost like he gave a shit. That’s not something you heard on
the streets. Nobody cared about a stranger. But this guy… either he meant it, or I was so run-down and hard up that I’d talk to anybody right now. Even him.

  “The rest of my friends—kids I live with—have been taken to the Labs, where they’re being experimented on. Clete and I tried to rescue them, but we couldn’t.”

  He said, “I can help.”

  Without turning around, I waited. If he really was a child killer then he was certainly crafty, probably had a whole book of lies and tricks in his head to get people to do what he wanted… But he knew that stuff about my wings, and I was flat out of options.

  He said, “I have friends, too—people your mom and I grew up with. Some of them are waiting for me in the city. I wasn’t supposed to get caught, get put in here. You can go find them—tell them what happened. They can probably help.”

  “Probably isn’t good enough,” I said, feeling exhausted. The glazed look in Calypso’s eyes had seared a hole in my heart. “I need promises.”

  “They’ll help you,” he said more strongly. “They know more about rescuing freaks than anyone in the world.” He put his mouth closer to the tiny window and whispered directions to where his friends were. Flying directions. “And hurry—if these labs are like labs I’ve known, time’s already run out. Tell ’em Fang sent you.”

  I gave him one last look: should I trust him? No. I shouldn’t trust him. He was a child killer. The worst of the worst. But he had known my wings. My wings.

  “Wait—you say you’re my dad. So you have wings, too?” I almost smiled at how easy it was to catch him in his own trap. Let’s see how he lied his way out of this.

  “Of course,” he said, sounding surprised again.

  My eyes and my mouth were all as round as O’s as I heard a fluttering sound, and then saw big black wings raised behind him. He moved them up and down while my heart skidded to a stop inside my chest. Wha—

  “Who are you?” I whispered in shock. Before he could answer, I turned and ran.

  CHAPTER 32

  I’d flown above the City of the Dead a million times. It was always the same: choking smog, factory chimneys billowing clouds of steam. All the coal dust hovered in the air till nighttime, when it sank to the ground for Opes to sweep it up and try to burn it again in their cheap little stoves.

  Tonight the air felt colder, denser. Like smog soup. I looked over at Ridley, flying so beautifully even in this industrial goop, and she looked back at me calmly.

  “Am I stupid for trusting him?” I yelled over at her.

  Her yellow eyes blinked at me. I kept flying.

  The Guy with Wings had given me directions to Sault Tower, way south and west, right on the edge of the green and greasy river. It had been supposed to be a luxury high-rise at some point—some point before McCallum. Which I couldn’t remember. Anyway, it’d been left unfinished. No one lived on the top three floors, the only ones of a hundred that had been completed.

  I landed on the roof; Ridley flitted down to sit on my shoulder. Silently I opened the rooftop door and headed down the dark, plywood stairway. Had this been a trap? Was I being set up?

  The sound of a shotgun’s ammo clinking into place made me certain. There’s a life lesson for ya: Never trust a child killer.

  “Since you’re about to die,” said a cool voice, “got any last words?”

  My mouth was dry from flying, my eyes watering from pollution. All of a sudden this seemed like the worst idea ever. I’d been so stupid. Deadly stupid. I took a chance on trusting a stranger in order to save my family, and now I was going to die in a dark hallway because of it. I swallowed a couple times and then in the darkness someone said, “Is that… Ridley?”

  Ridley snapped her head toward the voice and peered into the black. She gave a sudden squawk and left my shoulder, her long, deadly talons leaving indents in my skin.

  “How—” I started, then coughed, some of the smog from outside leaving my lungs. “How do you know Ridley?”

  “Fang gave her to…” a woman said, then stepped into the light. She was really pretty, in the same way Rain was, but she didn’t have rain marks all over her. Her skin was smooth and brown, and her hair was pulled tightly back into a ringlet-y ponytail. Ridley sat on her shoulder and was trying to preen her, touching her powerful beak gently against the woman’s skin. When the woman looked at me, she frowned, tilting her head.

  “Do we know you?” said a man’s voice. One by one they stepped closer, where the dirty moonlight glowed through an empty, unbuilt wall. There was a tall guy, taller than me, with super-white skin, pale white hair, and pale blue eyes. Another guy, not quite as tall and not quite as thin, came into the light. He was the one holding the shotgun. His dark blond hair stuck up on his head, and he had blue eyes, too, but darker than those of the Ghost Guy.

  “No,” I said shortly. “But your friend said you might help me.”

  “Fang gave this hawk to Phoenix,” the woman said, coming closer. There was that name again.

  I’m used to getting stared at, be it for my height, my pierced everything, and ever so rarely, my wings. This felt different. They were all squinting at me, like they were trying to remember if I’d robbed them once or something.

  “You don’t know me,” I said again. “And I don’t know you, but your friend said you could help me and time is running out. So will you, or what?”

  “Hm,” said the blond guy, but he didn’t lower the shotgun. “Iggy—”

  “On it,” said the tall blond guy, and he walked toward me. I stood still like a trapped rat while he reached out long, gentle fingers and carefully touched my face—after he’d started somewhere around my stomach. I realized he was blind and took his hands, moving them up, up, up to my face.

  “Careful,” I said, touching his palm first to the still-stinging cheek where the Chungs had cut a C into me. He nodded, acknowledging my injury, and Ridley flew to his shoulder, preening her feathers and shaking them, the way she did when she was super happy.

  “Jeez, you’re tall,” the blind guy said. His fingers traced my nose, my eyebrows, and the curve of my ears, skimming over the various studs, rings, points, and hoops along the way. He drew in a shuddering breath, one hand on my shoulder. “Guys—this… is Phoenix! Taller and older.”

  “My name is Hawk,” I said, but they were coming at me now, no shotgun, just a trio of grown-ups staring at me. Except the blind guy, who kept touching my face, my eyebrows, my earlobes.

  “Hawk!” I tried again, but it sounded like “Baw!” I’m one point eight meters tall, but they were all as tall as I was, or taller. Only the woman was maybe an inch shorter than me. Slowly they surrounded me—one of my favorite positions—and then they were all hugging me. Hugging me. Like, with hugs. I stiffened, not knowing what to do with all the affection from people I didn’t know, and trying to keep everybody from bumping the wound on my face. My shoulder felt wet—I peered down and saw it was because the woman was crying.

  It was so awkward and uncomfortable I almost threw up. Also, I couldn’t breathe.

  “Phoenix, Phoenix, Phoenix!” the woman murmured. She drew back, her face wet with tears, large brown eyes shining. She took my appalled face gently in her hands. “Is it you? After all this time?”

  “No,” I said tensely. “It’s Hawk, after like a minute.”

  “Gosh, whose daughter does she sound like?” the blond—not blind—guy said.

  I thought about the inmate saying I was his daughter, but didn’t say anything. Better to keep some tricks up my sleeve.

  “I’m Nudge,” the woman said, hugging me tightly. It took all my self-control to stand there and take it. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Iggy,” said the blind guy, reaching out and wiping away the woman’s tears. How he knew she was crying or where her cheeks were, I don’t know.

  “Gazzy,” said the other guy, holding the shotgun behind him. “The Gasman.”

  “We’re the Flock,” the woman said, like that should mean somethi
ng.

  “Flock of what?” I asked, totally confused. Then I stepped back, mouth open, as pair after pair after pair of enormous, powerful wings unfolded in the moonlight.

  CHAPTER 33

  My whole life, I’d been the only person I knew with wings. Calypso had antennas, Moke was blue, Rain had rain skin, and I’d seen a thousand poor freaks with everything from horns to see-through ears (I know—why???) to multiple sets of fingers, toes, and boobs. But I’d never, ever seen another pair of wings, till the prison guy had raised his.

  Just then the blare of the Voxvoce sounded loudly in the city a hundred stories below. Like me, it didn’t seem to bother these people.

  “Who are you?” I demanded. “What are you?”

  “Have you looked in a mirror, kid?” said the Ghost Guy. Iggy. “We’re like you. Or, you’re like us. We’re the Flock.”

  “We’re your Flock,” the woman—Nudge? What kind of a name is that?—said.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said flatly. “But my friends are being hurt, and I was told you could help me. Now, are you in or out?”

  “Ooh, voice from the past,” the blond guy—Gazzy?—murmured.

  “Who told you we could help you?” Nudge asked gently.

  “This horrible prisoner, at the place I live at,” I said. “He’s the worst of the worst, they said. A child killer.”

  “You live in a prison?” Iggy asked.

  “I live at a Children’s Home in the same complex as the prison,” I explained, thinking of all the seconds ticking by, seconds of Calypso hanging by one hand while Rainbow rotted her brain.

  “Did he tell you his name?” Nudge persisted, like she just wasn’t going to stop. Oh! That’s why her name was Nudge! Got it.