James Patterson - Maximum Ride Forever

“I got this,” I assured him. “You take the mansion.”

Dylan didn’t want to split up, but we needed to cover as much ground as possible. There was no way I was letting the Remedy slip through my fingers.

Still, as my footsteps echoed down the hall, I started to feel uneasy. The air was getting colder with every step, but even if it had been a hundred degrees down there, the place would’ve given me chills.

I didn’t know if there would be a bunch more newly created Horsemen to attack me or a blast of gas to knock me out, but everything about this place felt wrong.

When I pulled open the single door at the end of the hallway, I understood why.

It was an exact replica of the lab I’d grown up in. The same large dog crates lining the walls. The same gurneys covered with crinkly paper sheets. The test tubes and scalpels. The same acrid, chemical smell of disinfectant.

A whitecoat was there, his back to me, and my stomach clenched as I flashed back to the years spent being poked and dissected on a table like this, sweating with fever as various drugs worked their way through my system, vomiting from exhaustion as they put us through test after test.

My breath was coming in shallow little bursts, and I was trying very hard not to completely give in to a panic attack as I crept forward.

“Hello, Max,” the whitecoat said, and I stopped in my tracks, the hair rising on the back of my neck as the last piece of this little nostalgic puzzle snapped into place. The man turned around, and when he pulled the blue mask down from his face, he was smiling.

“Jeb,” I said, shaking my head in disgust. “I wondered how you fit into all of this. I should’ve known it had to do with your passion for cloning your pathetic little wolfboy son, ad infinitum .”

Jeb looked pained, and he took off his surgical glasses and massaged his eyelids. “Max, when Ari died, I was devastated. I just wanted to bring him back, the way he was.”

“A murderous sociopath with staggering daddy issues?”

Jeb leaned against the counter and crossed his arms, sighing heavily in that way parents do when they want to apologize without apologizing and instead skirt responsibility entirely.

“The point is, we’re past that now. Through a number of groundbreaking experiments, Dr. Gunther-Hagen helped me see my error — that it was the humanity of the mutants that was holding us back. The essential flaw that, if eliminated, would allow for a controlled population of indestructible guardians.”

Well, if that wasn’t a euphemism, I didn’t know what was.

“I hate to break it to you, but your murder-bots up there can die, just like everybody else.”

“They’re still a little buggy — Dylan in particular didn’t take well to the change — but with renewed supplies of DNA immortalis , we get closer every time. Closer to perfect.”

What?

I glanced around at the trays of test tubes. They were full of clear liquid, with what looked like cotton balls floating in them.

DNA immortalis — where have I heard that before?

Then I remembered an image I’d wanted to forget forever, of a body at the bottom of a cliff. Alarm bells started screaming inside my head.

“You made the Horsemen by splicing Fang’s genes?” I gaped at Jeb in horror as he shifted uncomfortably.

They killed Fang by using his own strength against him.

“Well, I don’t see any of your Horsemen now. You’re all alone in here.”

“I know it’s difficult to understand,” Jeb said quickly.

“Yes, it is,” I said as I walked toward Jeb. He flinched back against the counter, sending a tray of shiny medical instruments clattering to the floor. “Help me understand, Jeb.”

“It was never just work for me, Max,” he pleaded. “It was personal. I always wanted you kids to thrive, and thanks to Fang, now you truly can.”

“That won’t be happening.” I grabbed Jeb by the throat. He sputtered, clawing at my hands, but I was a hybrid and he wasn’t, and I was much stronger than he was. I squeezed tighter around his neck, concentrating on my fury. “I don’t want a Horseman bot with Fang’s DNA. I want Fang. And you killed him !”

Jeb’s face reddened, his eyes losing focus. His blood vessels darkened into purple webs, and I knew I couldn’t do it.

I hated Jeb more than anyone else. But I had loved him once, too, before all the betrayal. He had been like my father once upon a time, and he had saved me from a lab like this one and given me a home. Me and the flock. He’d taught me how to survive and made me feel important, and smart, and loved. For a while.

“There’s something wrong with you,” I said, releasing my grip. Deep sobs were welling up in me, but I was too well trained as a fighter to give in to them. “There’s something seriously wrong with you.”

Jeb took a gasping inhale, then hunched over, wracked with violent coughs as he tried to suck in air. For a second, I almost felt bad for him.

Just for a second, though.

The next moment, I felt a white-hot jolt in my side. My teeth ground down hard and every muscle in my body clenched as an electric force pulsed waves of pain through my body.

“Certain safety precautions are required when dealing with large mammals in a lab setting,” Jeb explained.

When he withdrew the Taser, I crumpled to the floor.

My legs dangled as Jeb gathered me into his arms. I wasn’t paralyzed — I still had a bit of feeling in my arms — but I couldn’t get enough control of my floppy limbs to bash his head in.

“You’re out of date, Max,” Jeb said, strapping me onto a gurney. My right hand twitched with a bit more purpose this time, my knuckles curling into a claw, but Jeb batted it away with ease as he tapped for a vein.

“Time for an upgrade.” He sat on the stool, flicked his fingers against the syringe, and leaned close, ready to drive it home.

No! my mind shrieked. Stop!

“Some of us do just fine the way we are,” a prep school voice laced with steel said from the doorway.

I remember the events that followed as if they were in slow motion, but I know it all must’ve happened in an instant:

Jeb looked to his left, and I tried to move my fingers again.

My arm snapped forward like it was spring-loaded.

I plunged the syringe, which I now somehow held, into Jeb’s thigh.

The room sounded like a storm of clanging metal as Star spun forward and smashed into my gurney, but Jeb’s bewildered eyes never left mine.

Right up to the point when Kate snapped his neck.

My head still lolled to the side, but my eyes flicked between the two girls from Fang’s gang, and the man who had been my dad, sprawled lifeless on the floor.

Did that really just happen?

“Angel said you needed help,” Kate said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She seemed as shocked as I was that Jeb was dead.

I nodded. Angel had heard my thoughts. I had needed help. He would have turned me into a monster.

But as I stared into Jeb’s stunned face, twisted awkwardly toward me, I didn’t feel relief.

I was horrified by his crimes, but I still felt an awful loss and disappointment. I know it sounds stupid, after so many years and betrayal after betrayal, but I’d still, somehow, kept hoping he’d go back to being the old Jeb one day. Now he didn’t have any more chances to prove himself or to change for the better. In the end, he had died an evil man.

And that was devastating.

My body started to shake — from the release of panic or tears, I wasn’t sure — and Kate, who had such power inside her she could break a man’s bones with one hand, began to undo my straps with the utmost gentleness.