James Patterson - Max

“How can you say that? I totally miss her.” Angel breathed. “Oh – guards ahead at two o’clock. Let’s detour.”

Iggy, Gazzy, and Angel pressed themselves into the shadows as MPs carrying rifles marched by on their rounds. When the MPs were out of earshot, the three bird kids hustled across the training field to the high fence, then nimbly flew over it and headed to the beach, well below any radar.

When they’d landed on the sand, Gazzy continued. “I miss Nudge too – a lot. But you know she was always the one who’d be like, ‘We better ask Max. Maybe we shouldn’t do this. Are you sure that’s okay?’ and stuff.” Gazzy had mimicked Nudge’s voice so perfectly that the other two, for a split second, expected to see her standing right there next to them.

“Well, Nudge isn’t here,” said Iggy, kicking off his shoes. “I wish she was, annoying caution and all. But since she isn’t” – he turned and grinned – “we can try the super-duper-oxygen-scoopers!” He held up a couple of contraptions that consisted of pilfered scuba masks, a vacuum cleaner hose, the motor from a blender, and some charcoal briquettes.

Gazzy held out his hand. “Super-duper-oxygen-scooper, please,” he said solemnly. He and Iggy each donned a contraption.

“You guys should really just try breathing under water,” Angel said, her hands on her hips. “It’s really important! Just try!”

“The last time I tried, I hurled for half an hour,” Gazzy said, his voice muffled by the tube in his mouth. “Max still won’t swim in that stretch of ocean off the East Coast. Nope, for me, it’s the latest handy-dandy inventionuoso by that brilliant duo of mutant scientists: Iggy and the Gasman! Who have genius programmed right in!”

Angel rolled her eyes behind her goggles, which Gazzy could easily see in the bright moonlight. Then she jumped upward, spread her pure-white wings, and flew out over the water. Gazzy and Iggy followed her.

When they were about a quarter mile from shore, they all folded back their wings, and dove in.

Even at night, with their raptor eyesight, they could see a whole different world under water, and set off to explore.

The super-duper-oxygen-scoopers worked as planned, siphoning ocean water through some filters, separating the air out, and shunting it into the boys’ mouths. Gazzy took Iggy’s hand and touched it to his own, which was making a triumphant thumbs-up. Iggy nodded enthusiastically.

Look! Sharks!

Angel’s thought floated into Gazzy’s brain, and for a second he was jealous that his own flesh-and-blood-and-feather sister could do that and he couldn’t. But his head swiveled until he saw Iggy pointing to the left. His heart quickened as he saw the enormous hammerhead shark seeming to glide lazily through the water.

Iggy took the rebreather out of his mouth. “I can sort of see down here!” His words were bubbly and indistinct, but Gazzy and Angel could make them out. “It’s like my echolocation works superwell!” He grinned hugely, then put his rebreather back in. “Oh. Big sharks.”

Again Gazzy turned to see several more hammerheads slowly undulating through the water. He was close enough to see their weirdly dead-looking eyes, and he shivered. Meeting Angel’s glance, he signaled to her: make them go away . She nodded, looking disappointed, then fastened her gaze on the huge fish.

It took several moments, and Gazzy had no idea what she told them, but the sharks gradually drifted away. Breathing a bubbly sigh of relief, Gazzy swam toward the large coral reef. He almost wished he could live under water all the time. It was so peaceful. There were so many amazing things to see – starfish clinging to the reef, a million different kinds of fish, some of them tiny and brilliantly colored, and some of them -

“Waugh!” Gazzy shouted into his rebreather. Right next to him, about three times as big as he is, was an enormous silver fish, its body shaped like a gigantic silver dollar rimmed with bright orange red fins.

The fish looked at him. Gazzy, frozen, looked back. The fish seemed to tilt its head to one side, puzzling over Gazzy, who could hardly breathe.

Angel swam up, smiling. She reached out her hand and stroked the shiny silver side. The fish seemed to enjoy it and turned to her. Angel tickled under its chin. Gazzy could swear that it grinned. Slowly he stretched out his own hand and patted the fish’s side. It was smooth and cool, with tiny ruffled scales. It was like a big fish-dog, practically wagging its tail fin with delight.

Then two things happened: First, several sudden, searing strings brushed against Gazzy’s face and arms, causing him to shriek and almost lose the rebreather. And then Iggy shouted: “Sharks! Sharks! And they’re bloody!”

The pain on his face and arms was so intense, Gazzy felt like he might pass out. But through the bloody water, he could blearily see the hammerheads thrashing, eating something big and white.

At that moment several of the enormous predators turned and spotted Iggy, Angel, and Gazzy. They no longer looked calm and placid. They looked sharp, powerful, fast, and hungry. With jaws agape to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth, they whipped their long tails back and forth, speeding toward the three bird kids.

OKAY, I CONFESS: When I heard the deep, rumbling noises and picked up on the bright flashes, even through my closed eyelids, all I thought was, Oh, my God. Fang is rocking my world! Just like those teen magazines say: “Does he put stars in your eyes? Does your heart skip a beat? Does the earth move whenever he’s around?”

I was thinking, Yes, yes, yes! All of those things !

Then I realized it was partly Fang and partly a bunch of M-Geeks with automatic weapons. The area around me was being strafed with bullets . Because this is me we’re talking about, not some cute teenager with shiny hair, a perfect smile, and no wings .

“Duck!” Fang yelled, pushing me to the ground and rolling with me under a cement bench. All around us, bullets sent chips of concrete ricocheting through the air. One shard hit my cheek, and I winced at the sting.

“I knew this was too good to be true,” I muttered, and Fang squeezed my side. “You think they know we’re here to rescue my mom? Are we getting too close?” Peering out from under our bench, we saw that there weren’t that many of the dumb-bots – maybe about twenty. They gave new meaning to the phrase “heavily armed.”

As the gang of M-Geeks slowly moved in, closing in a semicircle, all around us people were screaming and running away. Soon we would be surrounded, with just a shot-up bench between us and a bunch of trigger-happy robots grafted with Uzis.

Max the Leader stepped up. “Okay, behind us there’s a metal railing, then the cliff, and the ocean,” I said to Fang quickly. “Ease backward, beneath the railing, then drop down the cliff face. Wings out, we zoom up, and circle around in back of them.”

“Excellent plan,” Fang whispered. “Then what?”

“No idea. Start backing.”

Fang shot out from beneath the bench, scurrying over the cliff in less than a second. I was right behind him. I felt myself push off from the edge and snapped out my wings, then I was free-falling, praying I wouldn’t hit the sharp rocks below before I got some altitude.

The tip of my sneaker brushed one jagged boulder, and then my wings carried me upward, fast and hard. We swooped out low over the ocean, then circled back around the tip of the jetty. I was thinking as fast and hard as I was flying.

“We’ve got to get them over that cliff,” Fang said as we began to come up behind them. They were still closing in on the bench, shooting round after round. The nearby trash can had been peppered with bullets, a sign hung down broken, and the cement bench looked like Swiss cheese. Most important, the metal railing had been shot to pieces and would easily give way.