James Patterson - Maximum Ride Forever

“Who was it?” I prodded.

Dylan shook his head. “Never got a look. Next thing I know, I’m in an underground lab surrounded by cages.”

Harry’s eyes widened—“cage” was a word he understood.

“What did they do to you?” I asked.

“I found out later they call it upgrading .” Dylan shut his eyes for a second, his jaw tightening. “When it was over, I did feel different — stronger.” Unconsciously he flexed his fingers, and I remembered how he’d felt so much more muscular.

He looked at me. “But the complete reprogramming didn’t take. I was still me, but I was supposed to be somebody else. The only clue I had to go on was a note in my hand.”

He took a piece of folded paper from his pocket and held it out to me. “ ‘One True Way,’ ” I read. “Sounds like some Doomsday nonsense.”

Dylan nodded. “I thought the same thing, but when I walked out of the lab, I saw that the streets all had names like that — Right Path, Just Causeway. One True Way was an address, not a slogan.”

“How did you just walk out of the lab?” I asked.

“I don’t know — one day the door was open. I went through it, expecting to be captured at any second, but I just kept going. Then it was up a bunch of stairs, and I was on a street.”

“Where? What city?” I pressed.

Dylan shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t recognize it. And when I got to the address on True Way, Dr. Gunther-Hagen was waiting for me.”

“Wait, Hans is alive ?” I perked up. The last we’d seen of the German geneticist was in the fiery blaze of a plane crash over a year ago. We’d all assumed he was dead.

Dylan glanced at Angel, and she gave a slight nod. He turned back to me and rested his hands on my shoulders. His face was serious.

“Max, Dr. Gunther-Hagen is the Remedy.”

“What?!” I was on my feet, my mouth hanging open.

“I wasn’t sure what to make of him at first,” Dylan continued. “I tried to keep quiet, feel him out. But after a lecture on how the only solution to the ecological crisis was completely eliminating human impact, he asked me to kill the rest of the flock.”

“You have to be kidding me. Häagen-Dazs? Last I heard, he wanted me to start reproducing! Now we have to be eliminated?”

Dylan and Angel both nodded somberly. The three of us shared the unspoken knowledge that Dylan had been designed to be my mate, my perfect partner.

“Well, nothing should surprise me, at this point,” I said. “And yet I’m surprised.” Needing a minute, I stalked around the woods, trying to figure this out. Dylan was one of the Horsemen. Angel had arranged to have him pretend to kill the rest of the flock — convincingly, I might add. Now Dr. G-H had turned out not only to be alive, but to be the biggest honcho in all of honchodom.

I thought back to what Dr. Hans had said about Fang’s special DNA. How ambitious the doctor had been. How he had millions in grant money at his disposal.

Dr. Gunther-Hagen might have been a philanthropist, an environmentalist, and a brilliant scientist. But he was also a rich, manipulative extremist with a God complex — never a good combo.

I’d never liked him.

“He’s the force I’ve seen building for so long,” Angel said when I got back. “He is plague, and war, and famine, and death.”

“What you mean is, he’s a total asshat,” I said bluntly. “And we could’ve stopped him sooner.”

Then I got angry. Nail-spittingly angry. I was furious at everything Dr. G-H had done, and I wanted someone to pay. Right now.

“So, let me get this straight,” I said to Dylan. “This mass murderer was right in front of you, asking you to join his murder team and kill your friends, and instead of taking him out right then, you accepted the mission? And you just left him there?”

Dylan looked at me like I’d slapped him, and color rushed to his cheeks as if I really had.

“If I had killed the Remedy then, I would have been dead myself a second later. He has guards everywhere. But by pretending to follow his orders, I’ve been able to save the flock, gather information, and help Angel in her plan. Is that not good enough for you?”

“Why didn’t you come get me?” I pressed. “I could’ve helped you.”

“You were halfway around the world!”

“So was everyone else!” I yelled.

As Harry crouched on the other side of the fire, his head jerked back and forth between Dylan and me.

“I told you, the doctor was sending reinforcements, the other Horsemen!” Dylan threw up his hands in exasperation. “I had to get to everyone first and convince him you were all dead. Or you really would be!”

“But you—” I started again, but realized I was running out of objections.

It was possible Dylan had actually done a really good, selfless thing.

Maybe you should stop berating him , Angel’s voice said inside my head as she cocked an eyebrow. I glared at her, knowing she was right.

When I looked back at Dylan, into those aqua eyes that I’d missed so much, the fight drained right out of me.

“You did it all on your own?” I asked more calmly. “You risked your life to save the rest of the flock?”

“You guys are my family.” Dylan shrugged, humble as ever. “It’s what any of you would’ve done.”

My heart melted right then, and I nodded.

Yeah, it is. Time to eat crow. So to speak.

“C’mere, Boy Wonder.” I yanked Dylan toward me for the tightest hug, squeezing those pumped-up biceps until he understood how thankful I was — for what he’d done, and that he was still alive.

That he really was part of our family.

“So everyone’s safe, then?” I said, once the hugfest was over. “Where’s the flock? Are they close? I can’t wait to have us all back together again.”

Dylan winced and looked at Angel.

“What is it?” I asked.

Something was very wrong.

“ Almost everyone’s safe.” Angel spoke carefully.

I frowned. “Is someone hurt? What happened? Is it Nudge? Total?”

“It’s Fang,” Dylan said softly, not looking at me.

“Yeah? What about him?”

“He’s... dead, Max.”

You’d think those words would’ve laid me out, but they didn’t.

Because they simply didn’t make sense. I had once thought Angel was dead. It had been bad. I had feared that Dylan was dead, since we’d left the island. I had worried about each person in my flock, worried until it ate away at my insides and destroyed my sleep. But I’d never, ever imagined that Fang would actually ever be dead.

Ever.

Not until I was dead, too.

“I don’t understand,” I said stiffly. “There must be some mistake.”

Tell me it was a mistake. Tell me the reports of Fang’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Tell me.

“I knew it was gonna happen.” Angel’s voice sounded like it was underwater. “I’ve known it forever, and now it’s real.”

Real. Dead. Fang, my Fang, was no longer in this world. The world was still turning somehow, but without Fang.

My body seemed to understand the words before my head did. Just like this morning, I couldn’t get enough oxygen, and my heart and lungs were working double-triple-overtime. This time, my heart was physically breaking.

“Why do you think that?” My voice was remote.

Dylan hesitated. “It was the Horsemen — upgraded Erasers.”

“No. Take it back,” I choked out.

Make this feeling stop.

“Take what—” Dylan started to ask, but I grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and slammed him against a tree, pressing my forearm tight against his throat.