James Patterson - Maximum Ride Forever

Angel took a deep breath to steady herself and smelled the ash drifting in on the wind. It was now or never.

We have kids here from all over the world , she continued. This time, her lips moved, but she didn’t shout. She wanted them to hear every word, really hear her, so she spoke inside their minds.

Some of you came because you were starving. Some because you were homeless. Some because you wanted to fight...

Angel glanced at the silo girls standing near Gazzy, ammunition draped across their chests.

... And others came because you were afraid.

She nodded at Lucas and Matthew Morrissey.

But I know all of you want to understand what happened. You want to know the truth.

She saw Max’s face twitch, her eyes narrow. Angel nodded.

Let me show you.

Angel stilled her body until her feathers were barely moving. She relaxed her breathing and closed her eyes. She let the connection open up.

Her brain flooded with thoughts from thousands of other minds — worries, doubts, judgments, memories — all blurring together until the din was like a swarm of locusts buzzing inside her skull, furious and deafening.

Then she took her own vision, her own terrible knowledge, and she pushed it into that space. She made them see .

Angel showed them the round, perfect globe as only astronauts had seen it, blue and naked and seeming to glow.

She showed them the enormous asteroid and its fiery tail, roaring through the darkness, pulled like a magnet. Closer, closer.

The smaller pieces breaking off as it entered the earth’s atmosphere, scattering throughout the Pacific.

The many shooting stars that got brighter and brighter until it felt like your eyelids were peeled back, unable to shut out their light.

The moment the biggest chunk hit on the western coast of Morocco, there was too much to see at once, too much to know. The images flashed faster and faster, like a flipbook of drawings:

The main meteor, almost a mile wide, smashing against the earth, creating a new, gigantic crater where Morocco had once been.

The ring of fire that circled the massive crater, burning for months.

The jolt after the impact that rippled though the water within moments, churning into tsunamis.

Angel showed them the blinding flash that North Africans saw just before their bones vaporized in the heat. The mile-high tidal wave of water arcing over New York and most of the East Coast of the United States, Venezuela, and Spain just before it sucked everything back to sea. She showed them forests from Eastern Europe to the western US that burst into flame all at once as hot ash pelted down. And the shudder of shock waves racing underfoot around the globe, toppling cities, causing a domino effect of volcanoes to erupt with devastating results.

Angel showed them everything she could, and when she was done, she opened her eyes with a gasp, severing the connection.

Angel saw Nudge right below her, tears spilling down her cheeks. Many others were weeping, too. Just as Angel had.

Angel didn’t show them what had happened days and weeks after — the death and famine, the raids. They already knew all about that. There was just one more thing they didn’t know.

The Remedy did this , she told them. This, and much more. He dropped bombs, unleashed a virus. He tried to wipe all traces of humans off the earth.

The field of people was silent. They looked up at her with damp, desperate eyes, asking her what to do.

We have to fight , she answered.

Angel winced as a bolt of pain shot through her temples and a vision flashed behind her eyes — a split-second glimpse of this same field, littered with the wounded and the dead. She knew she was leading many of these kids to their deaths, but she had no choice.

The world doesn’t have very many people left, but it has us. You’ve survived. But is just surviving enough?

“No!” a few eager kids shouted, but others still looked uncertain.

The Remedy drops bombs and builds superhuman androids to do his dirty work, but he’s never gone to battle , Angel said, her words gaining force. The Remedy stole our planet, murdered our families, and destroyed our homes, but he’s never seen our faces. Are you going to let him walk away?

“NO!” the crowd roared in unison.

Angel fluttered down until she was just a few feet off the ground. She wanted to see the dirt on their faces. She wanted to be able to meet their eyes. All she had was these kids, and all they had was her, and whatever they’d grabbed from the rubble. Her fighters were armed with barbecue forks, baseball bats, broken crutches, lengths of rusted rebar, pitchforks, tree limbs, junior archery sets... their bravery humbled her.

“The Remedy thinks he has won,” she said aloud, her voice strident and clear. “But he can’t see the future. I can. And I swear, if you follow me, we will see him fall.”

Right there, Kate fell to her knees in the dirt, her dark hair hanging as she bowed her head. Beside her, Ratchet knelt as well. One by one the others followed, until over a thousand kids were kneeling before Angel, ready to serve.

All I’d wanted was to fight the Remedy. But as the troops were finally moving out, I was pushing backward against the tide of bodies, searching for blonde hair and white feathers.

I needed to talk to her first.

“Angel!” I yelled, elbowing my way through. “Ange!” I grabbed her hand and turned her around to face me. “What was that?” I demanded. I could still see the imprint of the explosion behind my eyelids, a sudden camera flash. I felt the heat, as real as if it were flaying my own skin. “Tell me what that was.”

In the middle of all this chaos, with people bumping past us and shouting directions, Angel had the stillness of a monk.

“You know what it was, Max. The day the sky caught fire — it was Armageddon.”

“But that doesn’t tell me anything!” I said, more frustrated than ever. Everyone was acting like Angel had given all the answers, but all I had were more questions. “How do you know it was the Remedy? And what about the bombs, and the Horsemen?” I was shaking her now. “How do you know what you saw is even real?”

“Because I know !” Angel shouted, wrenching free of my grasp. “Because I saw it, just like I saw Fang’s death — before it happened!” She looked up at me with watery blue eyes, and in that moment, I finally saw Angel for what she really was.

Not just a psychic or a mind reader. A prophet .

She was also a seven-year-old who’d been carrying around the most terrible secret in the world, all by herself. I noticed the ragged cuts around her fingernails where she’d torn the skin away, the dark circles around her eyes, and realized how much I had failed her.

“Oh, honey,” I said. When I put my hands lightly on the outsides of her arms, she tensed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because,” she said, her small bow lips quivering, “you never wanted to listen.”

“Of course I—” An image of Fang’s face flashed in my mind, and I winced.

Fair enough.

“I’m listening now,” I said gently.

We walked to the edge of the clearing, away from the rest of the kids, and Angel sat back down on the stump and pulled her knees up to her chest.

“The visions started after they altered my eyes at the school.”

My chest tightened, remembering that awful time after Paris. We’d all believed Angel was dead for weeks before finding her in one of Jeb’s corrupt labs.

“At first I thought I was blind, like Iggy. But then I realized I could actually see more — stuff that hadn’t happened yet. I kept seeing these flashes, and it was so scary, Max,” she said, resting her chin on her knees to look up at me. “I could never see the whole picture, and I didn’t know if it would be this year or in five years or a hundred years.”