James Patterson - Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

"I was thinking the same thing. They did everything except leave gigundo yellow arrows saying This way, folks!"

We'd flown in a mammoth circle and had picked up tire tracks within an hour. It looked like a big truck, lots of wheels, and it had left desert sand on the highway for almost half a mile. We couldn't think of any other reason a truck would have been hidden off-road and then driven out. Unless it belonged to, like, cactus poachers. Sand collectors. A movie crew.

This being the middle of Freaking Nowhere, USA, there was only the one road for miles and miles. So, one road with clear tire marks headed in one direction. Gee, obvious much?

"And we're falling for this because of our sudden, unexpected regression into unbelievable stupidity?" I said.

Fang nodded grimly. "We're falling for it because we've got no other choice."

"Oh, yeah. That."

Three hours of fast flight later, we saw them: an eighteen-wheeled semi parked off the road in perhaps the most desolate, unpopulated spot in all of Arizona. You could not call 911 from here. You could not run for help. You could send off a flare every half hour for days and not be seen by anyone.

"Looks like the place," I said, sighing. "And look at that crowd down there. I thought all the Erasers were exterminated."

"So the Voice lied to you?"

"No," I said slowly, as we coasted on a current. "It's never actually lied to me. So if those things aren't Erasers, then they're the Erasers' replacements. Oh, joy."

"Yep." Fang shook his head, so not into this. "Five bucks says they're worse than the originals. And they probably have guns."

"No doubt."

"And of course they're expecting us."

"We did everything but RSVP."

"I hate this." Fang deliberately looked everywhere but at my useless left hand.

"That would be because you've still got a tenuous grasp of sanity."

I circled wide, trying to gear myself up for an impossible fight: We would be outnumbered a couple hundred to two, by something worse than Erasers. I had no idea if the rest of the flock would be able to help.

It was pretty much a suicide mission.

Again.

"There is one bright side to this," said Fang.

"Yeah? What's that?" The new and improved Erasers would mutilate us before they killed us?

He grinned at me so unexpectedly I forgot to flap for a second and dropped several feet. "You looove me," he crooned smugly. Holding his arms out wide, he added, "You love me this much."

My shriek of appalled rage could probably be heard in California, or maybe Hawaii. Certainly by the unknown army down below. I didn't care. I folded my wings against my sides and aimed downward to get away from Fang as fast as possible. Now that he had filled me with a blind, teeming bloodlust, I was ready to take out a couple thousand Eraser replacements, no matter what they were.

Which, I admitted to myself, may have been his point.

Amazingly, we were able to thump to quick-running landings on the roof of the semi without getting punched full of little unaerodynamic bullet holes.

Heads swiveled to look at us, Erasery heads, but there was something different about them. I couldn't quite put my finger on what.

"Iggy?" I yelled.

"Max!" I heard his strangled cry from the rear of the truck and trotted over.

"You guys ok-," I began, then I saw Jeb, Ari, and Angel standing on the ground. "Angel!" I cried. "Are you okay? I'm gonna take these guys apa-"

The look in Angel's polar-ice eyes stopped me.

"I told you I should be the leader, Max," she said with a chilling flatness. "Now it's your time to die. The last life-forms from the labs are being exterminated, and you will be too." She turned to Jeb. "Right?"

Jeb nodded solemnly, and then my world went blank in the wink of an eye.

My head was feeling as if had been used as a bowling ball, against solid marble pins.

My heart pounded, my breaths were ragged and shallow, and every muscle I had ached. I didn't know what was going on, but it was bad.

I opened my eyes.

The word bad was so grossly inadequate to describe the situation that it was like it was from another language-a language of naive idiots.

I was strapped to a metal hospital bed, wrists and ankles bound with thick Velcro.

And I wasn't alone.

With effort, I raised my head, fighting off the swift wave of nausea that made me gag and swallow convulsively.

To my left, also strapped to a metal bed, the Gasman breathed unevenly, twitching in his sleep.

Next to him, Nudge was starting to move, moaning slightly.

Turning to the right, I saw Iggy. He was lying very still, eyes open, staring up at a ceiling he couldn't see.

On his other side, Fang was straining silently against his Velcro restraints, his face pale and grimly determined. When he felt me looking at him, I saw relief soften his gaze for a split second.

"You okay?" I mouthed.

He gave a short, quick nod, then inclined his head to gesture to the others. I nodded wearily, summing up our situation with a universal "this is crap" expression. He tilted his head at a bed across from us. There was Total, looking dead except for the occasional muscle jerk, his small limbs bound like ours. He looked mangy, missing patches of fur around his mouth.

Moving my head carefully so I wouldn't hurl, I examined our surroundings. We were in a plain white room, which was windowless. I thought I saw a door beyond Nudge's bed, but I couldn't be sure.

Iggy, Fang, me, Gazzy, Nudge, Total.

Angel wasn't here.

I drew in a breath, readying myself to struggle against the straps, and it was then that it hit me: the smell. That chemical, antiseptic smell of alcohol, floor cleaner, plastic tubing. The smell that had filled my nose every day for the first ten years of my life.

Horrified, I stared at Fang. He gave me a questioning look.

Wishing desperately that I was wrong but with the terrified, sinking knowledge that I wasn't, I mouthed the answer: "The School."

Fang's eyes flared in recognition, and that was the only confirmation that I needed of this nightmare.

We were back at the School.

The School-the awful, terrifying place we had spent the past four years trying to get over, get away from. At the School, we'd been experimented on, tested, retested, trained. Because of this place, I would never be able to deal with people in long white coats and could never major in chemistry. Because of this place, when I saw a dog crate at a PetSmart, I broke into cold chills.

"Max?" Gazzy's voice sounded dusty and dry.

"Hey, sweetie," I said as quietly as I could.

"Where are we? What's going on?"

I didn't want to tell him, but while I was trying to come up with a convincing lie, the reality broke into his brain, and he stared at me, appalled. I saw him silently say, "The School," and I had no choice but to nod. His head flopped back against his bed, and I saw that his once fluffy blond hair was a dusty, matted gray.

"Hey!" Total said with weak indignation. "I demand a lawyer." But his characteristic belligerence was betrayed by the sad pain in his voice.

"Do we have a Plan B? Or C? Even Z?" Iggy's voice had no life in it, no energy, and I got the impression that he'd given up and was only going through the motions.

I cleared my throat and swallowed. "Yes, of course," I said, scrabbling for any shred of authority I could muster. "There's always a plan. First, we get out of these straps."

I felt Nudge awaken and looked over at her. Her large brown eyes were solemn, her mouth stiffly trying not to quiver. A purplish bruise mottled her cheek, and I saw more on her arms. I'd always thought of her as a little kid, like Gazzy and Angel, but all of a sudden she seemed ten years older.