James Patterson - Maximum Ride Forever

“Did anyone else know about all this? The meteor and bombs and apocalypse?” I asked, still trying to figure out where the Remedy fit into all this.

“The scientists did, and the world leaders,” Angel said. “I didn’t find that out until the day it hit, when I heard Dr. Martinez’s thoughts.”

“But my mom was worried about the H8E virus,” I said. I remembered her telling Fang and me about the plague the Apocalypticas had developed, how we should all be safe from it, on the island. “She didn’t mention the meteor.”

“That’s because the Russians had planned to blast it apart with nuclear weapons. ‘They were going to nuke it’ —that’s what Dr. Martinez kept thinking the day the sky caught fire. ‘I thought Russia was going to nuke it.’ ”

“But somehow Dr. G-H got control of the nukes first?”

Angel nodded.

“He just... let it... hit us,” she said, looking up at me in bewilderment, and I’m sure my face was a mirror of shocked, sickened horror. Angel started to weep, and I hugged her close to me. “I swear I didn’t know about the Remedy, Max.” She cried harder, her tears soaking my neck. “I just knew we had to get to Russia.”

“I know, sweetie,” I whispered, smoothing her hair. “I’m so sorry I didn’t listen.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she hiccupped. “And I wasn’t trying to hurt Fang by showing him his fall. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

I couldn’t think of Fang without feeling the cold grip of nausea in my gut, and I stiffened. Angel felt the shift and pulled away from me, wiping her face.

“We should go. I said I would lead those kids.”

My little prophet.

“You really were great up there earlier, Angel. A true leader.”

“I know,” Angel said matter-of-factly, and I laughed. “What?” She smiled. “I told you I know stuff. You taught me a lot, though, Max.”

“Oh yeah?” I cocked an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Like how you never stop fighting for the right ending. Even after the apocalypse.”

That’s my girl. I snapped open my wings, and Angel did the same.

“Let’s show Dr. God what hell feels like.”

Once again, Angel hovered above her army. The icy wind cut through her thin clothes and whipped against her cheeks, but Angel faced it unblinkingly. This time, she was officially their leader, the general leading them to war.

And, for some of them, to death.

We will win, though , Angel told herself, though her visions had never shown her the final outcome. We have to.

As they shivered in haphazard lines awaiting Angel’s command, she studied the layout of the battlefield below. Years of living with Max on the run had taught her to look for vulnerabilities, and she saw that geography was in their favor, at least. The main entrance to the underground city known as Himmel was in a clearing, so they had unobstructed access, and though Dylan had warned her about vents in the surrounding ground, the surrounding woods provided a natural barrier against escape. From her vantage point in the sky, Angel saw beyond the trees as well — to endless miles of flat Siberian wilderness.

The Remedy might have an advanced security system, but he was still underground. There was nowhere for him to run.

“Prepare the catapult!” she yelled down to Gazzy and Iggy. She watched as they started to load the homemade smoke bombs.

Himmel’s entrance didn’t look like much from above. From the ground it appeared like the mouth of a cave, but the outcropping was hidden by the wiry grasses that covered the rest of the countryside. From up here, apart from a small mound in the earth, you’d barely know it was there.

“ FIRE! ” Angel commanded.

Gazzy launched the grenades one after the other, but apart from the sound of the egg-like objects singing toward Himmel’s narrow mouth, the field was silent. The air felt full of static, it was so pregnant with anticipation.

Then, as the bombs started to release their gases, Angel heard a barrage of new thoughts, all at once.

Not the thoughts of her own army, but of the army below — the one she hadn’t been sure was there.

They were there, all right, and Angel realized with alarm that there were more than she’d ever anticipated. There were many thousands of fighters in the Remedy’s army. More than they could ever take on.

“ HOLD! ” Angel shouted a little hysterically at her ranks. But the events had already been set in motion, and thick clouds of smoke began billowing out of the hole. The angry, panicked thoughts of the Remedy’s army buzzed louder, louder. “Hold...”

The survivors and the mutants on the field twitched uncomfortably in response to Angel’s reaction. They didn’t hear the deafening thoughts, couldn’t fathom how many soldiers there were; they saw only an empty field.

Her friends had no clue what was about to happen.

They waited, watching the smoke-filled hole.

They tensed, readying themselves for what was to come.

“ CHARGE! ” Angel screamed the moment she saw the outline of bodies through the smoke.

As her fighters surged forward, the Remedy’s troops started to emerge, but the entrance to Himmel was so narrow it formed a bottleneck. Only a few of the Remedy’s soldiers could get out at a time, she realized.

There was still a chance they could hold them off!

The billowing smoke blocked her view, but right before the armies clashed into each other, Angel saw her troops hesitate, just for a moment.

What are you doing? She sent the question telepathically to Kate, their strongest fighter, who was on the front lines. What’s wrong?

“ They’re kids, Angel ,” Kate answered her. “Just little kids.”

Angel’s heart broke, but the rest of her shook with fury. They’d been mentally, if not physically, prepared for the Remedy’s superhuman Horsemen or his armed Russian guards. Using children to fight his war was way more despicable.

They were fighting, though. They were Doomsday soldiers, brainwashed to hate humans and mutants alike. Angel watched more and more of them pushing past her soldiers, weapons held in fierce grips, eyes lusting for blood. If her survivors didn’t push back, they’d all be killed.

Luckily, the flock, at least, had dealt with these kids before. Nudge let out a terrifying battle cry and launched herself forward in a roundoff backflip, her feet catching two machete-wielding warriors midair. The rest of the troops followed, battling the Remedy’s child army in hand-to-hand combat.

Angel worked on breaking into the minds of the Doomsday fighters, but she knew from past experience that the cult mind was extremely difficult to crack into — the One Light had an incredibly powerful hold on them.

Still, she burrowed into their minds, hammering at the boundaries of their psyches, her head throbbing as she worked to free them before too many had to die. In a trancelike state herself, Angel was concentrating so hard on battling back the warped thoughts that she almost didn’t hear Dylan’s desperate cry.

“ THE VENTS! ” he was screaming at full volume now. “ANGEL, THE VENTS!”

As dozens of Horsemen burst up through unseen vents in the field, Angel shook in despair. These Horsemen were elite models, robots whose actions were completely controlled by the Remedy, so she couldn’t read their thoughts.

But she knew their power.

“ Ratchet! Kate! Dylan! ” she summoned them telepathically, her voice tinged with real fear for the first time. “Get to Max!”

Even if they didn’t win this battle, even if she couldn’t save these kids, Angel knew, as she’d always known, that Max was their only chance at saving the world.