James Patterson - Maximum Ride - The Angel Experiment

It was like a taxi-fortune cookie. Every journey, one step. One step. I blinked.

I stopped where I was and looked down, where my feet were taking one step at a time on this long, bizarre journey.

Then I noticed a stunted, depressed tree set into a hole in the sidewalk. A metal grate protected its roots from being trampled. Barely visible between the bars of the grate was a plastic card. I picked it up, hoping I wouldn’t see a burning fuse attached to it.

It was a bank card, the kind you can use at an ATM. It had my name on it: Maximum Ride. I tugged on Fang’s sleeve, wordlessly showed him the card. His eyes widened a tiny bit, so I knew he was astonished.

And voila, my ol‘ pal the Voice popped up just then: You can use it if you can figure out the password.

I looked up, but the mystic taxi was long gone.

“I can use it if I can figure out the password,” I told Fang.

He nodded. “Okay.”

Swallowing, I tucked the card into my pocket.

“Let’s just get into the park,” I said. “Nice, safe Central Park.”

“How can the Voice know where I am and what I can see?” I whispered to Fang. All six of us had settled onto the wide, welcoming branches of an enormous oak tree in Central Park. Almost forty feet in the air, we could talk softly with no one hearing us.

Unless the tree was wired.

Believe me, I had lost my ability to be surprised by stuff like that.

“It’s inside you,” Fang answered, settling back against the tree’s trunk. “It’s wherever you are. If it’s tapped into any of your senses, it knows where you are and what you’re doing.”

Oh, no, I thought, my spirits sinking. I hadn’t considered that. Did that mean nothing I did was ever private anymore?

“Even in the bathroom?” The Gasman’s eyes widened with surprise and amusement. Nudge suppressed a grin as I gave Gazzy a narrow-eyed glare. Angel was smoothing Celeste’s gown and neatening the bear’s fur.

I took out the bank card and examined it. I still had the one we’d stolen from the jerk in California, and I compared them. The new one seemed just as legit as the old one. I stuck the old one into a deep fissure in the tree’s bark-couldn’t use it again anyway.

“So we need to figure out the password,” I muttered, turning the new card over and over in my hands. Great. That should only take about a thousand years or so.

I was beyond tired. I also had an impressive knot on my head from whacking the sidewalk. Because, you know, I didn’t have enough head problems lately.

Wordlessly, I held out my left fist. Fang put his on top, then Iggy, then Nudge. Gazzy leaned way over from his branch and managed to barely touch us. Angel leaned down and put her fist on Gazzy’s, and then Celeste’s paw on top of her fist. I heard Gazzy sigh. Or something. We all tapped hands, then got comfy on the wide branches. Angel was directly above me, her small foot hanging down to touch my knee. I saw her tuck Celeste firmly against the tree. Kinda sweet.

The evening air washed over me. My last thought was that I was thankful we were together and safe for at least one more night.

“I t is unlawful to climb trees in Central Park,” boomed a tinny but very loud voice.

My eyes popped open and instantly met Fang’s dark ones. We looked down.

A black-and-white was parked below, its lights flashing. Like in New York they didn’t have any more important crimes to work on than a bunch of kids sleeping in a tree.

“How did they even know we were up here?” the Gasman muttered. “Who looks up into a tree?”

A uniformed cop was talking to us through a PA system. “It is unlawful to climb trees in Central Park,” she repeated. “Please come down at once.”

I groaned. Now we had to shimmy clumsily down instead of just jumping and landing like the amazing super-duper mutants we were.

“Okay, guys,” I said. “Get down; try to look normal. When we’re on the ground, we’ll make a run for it. If we get separated, connect up at, like, Fifty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. Comprende?”

They nodded. Fang went down first, and Iggy followed him, carefully feeling his way. Man, for big adolescent kids, they were some awesome, squirrelly climbers.

Angel went next, then Nudge, then Gazzy, and I went last.

“There are signs posted everywhere clearly stating that climbing trees is forbidden,” one cop began pompously. We started to back away slowly, trying to look as if we weren’t really moving.

“Are you runaways?” asked the female cop. “We’ll take you somewhere. You can make phone calls, call your folks.”

Uh, officer, there’s a little problem with that…

Another cruiser pulled up, and two more police people got out. Then a walkie-talkie buzzed, and the first cop pulled it out to answer it.

“Now!” I whispered, and the six of us scattered, tearing away from them as fast as we could.

“Celeste!” I heard Angel cry, and I whirled to see her turning back to pick up her little bear. Two cops were racing toward it.

“No!” I yelled, grabbing her hand and pulling her with me. She almost fought me, planting her feet and trying to unbend my fingers from around her wrist. I swung her up into my arms and took off, tossing her to Fang when I reached him.

With a fast glance back, I saw that the female cop had picked up the bear and was staring after us. Behind her, the others were jumping into their cruisers. Just as I sped around a corner, I saw a tall cop sliding into his car. I blinked hard, twice, and my heart seemed to freeze. It was Jeb. Or was it? I shook my head and ran on, catching up to the others.

“Celeste!” Angel cried, reaching back over Fang’s shoulder. “Celeste!” She sounded heartbroken, and it killed me to make her leave her toy behind. But if I had to choose between Angel and Celeste, it was going to be Angel every time. Even if she hated me for it.

“I’ll get you another one!” I promised rashly, my legs pumping as I kept up with Fang.

“I don’t want another one!” she wailed, putting her arms around Fang’s neck and starting to cry.

“Have we lost ‘em?” the Gasman called back over his shoulder.

I looked back. Two police cars with lights and sirens were weaving through the heavy traffic toward us.

“No!” I put my head down and ran faster.

Sometimes it felt as if we would never be free, be safe. Never, ever, as long as we lived. Which might not be that much longer, anyway.

We headed south and east, out of the park, hoping to get lost among the ever-present crowds of people jamming the streets.

Fang put Angel down and she dutifully ran, her small face white and streaked with tears. I felt really, really bad about Celeste. Iggy ran next to me, his hand out to barely brush against me. He was so good at keeping up, following us, that it was easy to forget sometimes that he was blind. We passed Fifty-fourth Street-the police were still behind us.

“Inside a store?” Fang asked, pulling up beside me. “Then out through a back exit?”

I thought. If only we could take off, get airborne-leave the ground and the noise and the crowds and the cops behind, be up in the blue, blue sky, free…My wings itched with the urge to snap open, unfurl to their full size, catch the sun and wind in them.

“Yeah, maybe so,” I shot back. “Let’s turn east on Fifty-first.”

We did. Then we pounded down the pavement. Really fast. I almost laughed when I realized it was a one-way street going the wrong way: The cruisers would have to take a detour.