James Patterson: Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

The chopper’s rotor was picking up speed, and I shot out from behind the trees. They were not going to get my baby. They were not taking her back to that place.

Ari jumped out of the car, carrying the sack with Angel in it.

I tore toward the chopper, fear and desperate anger making my blood sing. Ari threw Angel’s sack through the open door. He jumped in behind, an incredible athlete himself.

With a furious roar, I sprang up and caught hold of the chopper’s landing skid just as it took off. The metal was hot from the sun and too wide to hold. I hooked one arm over it, trying to steady myself.

The massive downdraft from the rotors almost snapped my wings in half. I pulled them in, and the Erasers laughed, pointing at me as they closed the glass hatch. Ari was right there. He picked up a rifle and aimed it at me.

“Let me tell you a secret, old pal, old chap,” Ari yelled at me. “You’ve got it all wrong. We’re the good guys!”

“Angel,” I whispered, near tears. Ari’s claw tightened on the trigger. He would do it. And dead, I would be no use to anybody.

My heart breaking, I let go, falling fast, just as I saw a small, tousled blond head shake itself free of the sack.

My baby, flying away toward her death.

And, trust me on this, things much worse than death.

We all have great vision-raptor vision. So we had the excruciating pain of watching the helicopter take Angel away for much longer than the average person. My throat closed with a sob. Angel, whom I had cared for since she was a baby with goofy chicken wings. I felt like they had chopped my own right wing off, leaving a ragged, gaping wound.

“They have my sister!” the Gasman howled, throwing himself down. He always tried so hard to be a tough guy, but he was only eight, and he’d just seen his sister kidnapped by the hounds of hell. He pounded the dirt with his fists, and Fang knelt next to him, one arm tenderly around his shoulder.

“Max, what are we gonna do?” Nudge’s eyes were swimming with tears. She was bruised and bloody, her fists clenching and unclenching anxiously. “They have Angel.”

Suddenly I knew I was going to implode. Without a word, I pushed off from the ground, wings out, taking off as fast as I could.

I flew out of sight, out of the others’ hearing. Ahead was a huge Douglas fir, and I landed ungracefully on one of its upper branches, maybe 175 feet in the air, scrabbling to catch hold because I’d overshot. Gasping, I clung to the limb.

Okay, Max, think. Think! Fix this! Figure something out.

My brain was flooded with too much thought, emotion, confusion, rage, pain. I needed to get a grip.

But I couldn’t get a grip.

It was like I had just lost my little sister.

And like I had lost my little girl.

“Oh, God, Angel, Angel, Angel !”

Yelling as loud as I could, I made fists and punched the chunky bark of the fir tree hard, over and over, until finally actual pain seeped into my seared consciousness. I stared at my knuckles, saw the blood, the missing skin, the splinters.

The physical pain hurt much less than the mental kind.

My Angel, my baby, had been snatched away. She was with bloodthirsty man-wolf mutants eager for her blood who would turn her over to despicable lab geeks who wanted to take her apart. Literally.

Then I was crying, clinging to the tree as if it were a lifeboat from the Titanic, and I sobbed and sobbed until I thought I’d make myself sick. Gradually, the sobs slowed to shudders, and I wiped my face on my shirt, leaving streaks of blood.

I sat in the tree until my breathing calmed and my brain seemed to be hitting on most cylinders again. My hands were killing me, though. Note to self: Stop punching inanimate objects.

Okay. It was time to go down and be strong, to get everyone together, to come up with Plan B.

And one other thing-Ari’s last words were still screaming in my brain: We’re the good guys.

Idon’t even remember flying home. I felt heartbroken and numb, and when we walked into the kitchen, the first thing I saw was Angel’s breakfast plate on the table.

Iggy howled and swept his hand across the kitchen counter, catapulting a mug through the air. It hit Fang in the side of the head.

“Watch it, idiot!” he yelled at Iggy furiously. Then he realized what he’d said, clenched his teeth, and rolled his eyes at me in frustration.

Tears were streaming down my cheeks, their salt stinging where the Eraser had raked me with his claws. Moving automatically, I got the first aid kit and started cleaning the Gasman’s scrapes and cuts. I looked around. Nudge’s cheek was bleeding; some shrapnel had burned her as it flew past. For once she wasn’t talking-she was curled on the couch, crying.

The Gasman glanced up at me.

How’d you let this happen, Max?

I was asking myself the same question.

True, I’m the leader, I’m Max the Invincible-but I’m also just a fourteen-year-old kid. And every once in a while, like when I realize all over again that Jeb is gone forever, that we’re on our own, that the others depend on me and I can’t let them down, well, that’s when it all gets to me. Suddenly, I’m a little kid again, wishing Jeb were back-or even, hey, wishing I was normal! Or had parents!

Yeah, right.

“You watch it!” Iggy shouted at Fang. “What happened? I mean, you guys can see, can’t you? Why couldn’t you get Angel?”

“They had a chopper!” the Gasman yelled, squirming out of my reach. “And guns! We’re not bulletproof!”

“Guys! Guys!” I yelled. “We’re all upset. But we’re not the enemy! They’re the enemy.”

I stuck the last Band-Aid on the Gasman and started pacing. “Just-be quiet for a minute so I can think,” I added more calmly. It wasn’t their fault our rescue mission had been such a total ditcher. It wasn’t their fault Angel was gone.

It was their fault that the kitchen looked like it belonged to a family of hygiene-challenged jackals, but I would deal with that later. Whenever that kind of thing became important again. If ever.

Iggy moved to the couch and almost sat on Nudge. She scooted to one side, and when he sat down, she put her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair.

“Take deep breaths,” the Gasman advised me, looking concerned. I almost burst into tears again. I had let his sister get kidnapped, failed to save her, and he was worried about me.

Fang was darkly silent. His eyes watched me as he opened a can of ravioli and picked up a fork with a heavily bandaged hand.

“You know, if they just wanted to kill her, or kill all of us, they could have,” Nudge said shakily. “They had guns. They wanted Angel alive for some reason. And they didn’t care if we were alive or not. I mean, they didn’t go out of their way to make sure we were dead, is what I’m saying. So that makes me think we have time to go after Angel again.”

“But they were in a chopper,” said the Gasman. “They’re way gone. They could be anywhere.” His lower lip trembled, and he clenched his jaw. “Like, China or something.”

I went over and ruffled his already ruffled blond hair. “I don’t think they took her to China, Gazzy.”

“We know where they took her.” Fang’s calm words fell like stones. He scraped the bottom of the can with his fork.

“Where’s that?” Iggy asked, raising his head, his blind eyes bloodshot with unshed tears.