James Patterson - Maximum Ride Forever

“I tried!” Dylan pressed his palm against the trunk of a tree and shook his head. “There were too many of them, and I lost consciousness...”

“You blacked out?” I focused on that last scrap of hope — the final possibility that could mean it was all a big mistake. “So you didn’t see him die, either.”

It’s a lie a lie a lie.

“I saw the Horsemen tear into him.”

That’s when it all started to feel real again, and the tears began to leak everywhere.

“Max Mum!” Harry’s feathers were all puffed up again, and he was glaring at Dylan.

“I’m fine, Harry.” I was blubbering, but I held my hand up to tell him to stay where he was.

Dylan lowered his voice and knelt down next to me. “I know this is hard for you,” he said gently. “I know you still don’t trust Angel, and as for me...” My heart clenched and I looked up just as he glanced away. “Well, I have no idea what you think of me anymore.

“But you know I wouldn’t lie to you.” His gaze was steady, and he took both of my hands in his. “Fang’s not coming back, Max. Not ever. I even sent the video to the Remedy as proof. It was the first time I reported a death that wasn’t a lie.”

My whole body stiffened.

“What do you mean, the video?” I asked, and Dylan winced. “Tell me.”

“They put a tech chip in my arm to communicate,” he explained reluctantly, and pulled up his sleeve to reveal a small screen. “I was recording to sell the doctor on what I thought would be a faked death, like all the others, but then...”

“Play it for me.”

Dylan’s eyebrows shot up. “What? Max, no. Trust me, you don’t want to see that.” When I didn’t look away, Dylan started to pace. “Look, maybe I don’t want to see it again, either, okay? When I woke up and saw him lying there, all...”

Dylan took a deep breath and raked his fingers through his hair as if trying to pull the image out. He looked back at me with an expression of utter horror, but I tugged at his arm desperately.

“I’ll never believe it,” I pleaded. “I’ll never let it go. I just need to know, Dylan. To move on.”

Dylan pressed his lips together in disapproval, shaking his head. He pushed a button on his wrist.

The picture was grainy and chaotic, and dark forms swooped in and out of the frame, massive Erasers who kept landing hard hits. I heard Dylan’s voice pleading, and then Fang’s voice, and then Dylan’s moan, just as a set of ugly wolf jaws seemed to come right at the screen, blurring the video for a second.

“This is where I blacked out,” Dylan said.

But the camera kept rolling. Now that Dylan wasn’t jerking all around, it was actually a lot clearer than before.

At first you only saw fat, white snowflakes, with the mountainous skyline stretching far into the background. I watched those snowflakes for several long seconds, feeling anything but calm as the quiet rang in my ears.

Then, a voice offscreen. A man’s voice was calling up to Fang, taunting him. A voice I recognized.

“What the hell was Jeb doing there?” I jumped to my feet, shouting at Dylan.

But before he answered, we saw action on the video screen. Fang crashed into the image with three giant Erasers snarling on his back. Fang was more beat-up than I’d ever seen him. His lips and eyes were so swollen and bloodied that his face was almost unrecognizable, and the huge wolves were still going to town, biting into his flesh and pummeling his skull one after the other.

“Why isn’t he fighting back?” I demanded, watching as Fang raked his nails along the ground, trying to crawl free.

“He was,” Dylan answered. “But they’re not just Erasers. They’re Horsemen.”

My hands covered my mouth and half my face so that just my eyes were peeking out. I watched as a steel-toed boot connected with Fang’s torso, and I felt my own body shudder as I heard his ribs crack. I didn’t know how much more I could take of this, when, mercifully, they tumbled out of view.

Jeb was on the edge of the screen, though. We heard the grunts of the fighters, and he was crouched next to them like a patient referee waiting to call the match. Then, even though I couldn’t see what happened, I heard Fang scream in agony.

The sound made my eyes fill with tears and my blood run cold. I was shaking all over.

But Fang and the Horsemen rolled into view again, and I exhaled with relief. This time, Fang had his arms locked around the three hulking bodies, grabbing fistfuls of fur and straining necks — whatever he could grasp. He seemed so confident, I thought he’d gotten some advantage, channeled a new power.

But then he started to roll.

“What is he doing?” I whimpered. “Oh, God, what is he doing?”

Despite his obviously weakened state, Fang’s will was unstoppable. He dragged the frantic Horsemen toward the edge... and then they were offscreen again.

Afterward, I held my breath as I waited for Fang to stumble back in front of the camera, listening desperately for the sound of his ragged breathing.

There were only snowflakes, though — and silence.

The silence seemed to go on forever.

Dylan started to turn off the video, but then I spotted Jeb, awkwardly dragging something toward the edge.

“Wait!” I squeezed Dylan’s arm. “What is that?”

It was black and oddly shaped, textured and smooth at once.

“Stop it,” I said abruptly. I felt bile rising in my throat as I remembered the screams. “That’s enough.”

It was way more than enough.

It was Fang’s bloody, mangled wing.

“He took the rest of them out with him,” Dylan said reverently. “The best assassins the Remedy had. He was brave, Max. To the very end. I thought you might want this,” he added. “To remember.”

Dylan held out a feather, about a foot long, beautifully black and shiny.

If you’ve ever loved someone like I did, if they made you crazy and happy and exasperated and elated and if you wanted to hold them and shake them and sometimes kick them and if, after all that, they were like part of your family and part of your soul...

Imagine seeing that feather. Imagine what that felt like.

It made it real.

It wasn’t just a punch to the gut; it was a rip, too — like someone had torn all the hope and love, plus all the muscle and bone, right out of my body. I had nothing left to stand on.

I’d fallen to my knees before I’d even felt them buckle, and the nausea finally overcame everything else.

“I’m sorry, Max!” Dylan cried miserably as I retched again and again into the dirt. “I’m so sorry.”

I awoke feeling cold again. But this time, the cold felt heavy in my gut, and it didn’t go away.

Angel led us. Harry and Dylan formed the V, and I hung back, riding the slipstream and letting them carry me for thousands of miles. We flew up along the west coast of Canada and over Alaska, and I didn’t look down once. Didn’t want to see the flattened cities and charred forests. Didn’t want to see the landscape as bleak as my mind.

I don’t deal with death well, you might have noticed. I don’t really deal at all — I go on autopilot. The flight to Russia felt like one long hallucination, and I didn’t eat, or talk, or cry.

It seemed like I barely breathed.

I do know that as we flew over Alaska, we were pelted with a blizzard so fierce it almost knocked Harry from the air. The cold made Dylan’s teeth chatter and Angel’s breath come in gasps, but I hardly felt any of it.

My thoughts were as blank as the snow.

Numb.

The Bering Strait was less than a hundred miles across, but the slate-colored water looked like an endless dark hole, trying to suck me down.