Maximum Ride Forever (22 page)

THE GROUND UNDER me shook violently. Like everyone else on the front lines, I couldn’t see anything through the smoke, but it sounded like the world was breaking open.

Our whole army was bunched in a tight cluster in the center of the field. It was obvious we were in an extremely vulnerable position, but we had to hold back the ranks upon ranks of Doomsday psychos who kept pushing out of the entryway.

Right now, I was in a hair-pulling battle with a surprisingly vicious pigtailed eight-year-old and standing on an older boy’s windpipe as I tried to pry his fingers off his homemade scythe. I thought that was more important than worrying about an earthquake… until I realized it wasn’t an earthquake.

It was another army, shooting up out of holes in the ground all around us.

An army of M-Geeks.

At least that’s what I thought they were. They sure looked like the flying robots that had annoyed us since the days of Mr. Chu—right down to the weapons grafted onto their arms in place of hands.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT!
came the sound of machine-gun fire.

The field became a tangle of chaos and panic. I knew how to fight these villains, though. I’d done it before.

Leaving behind the Doomsday kids I’d pinned, I shot into the air. I flew erratically, hearing the pop of bullets and trying to find a clear view of one of the robots.

“Watch it!” Ratchet smashed into my side, knocking me off balance.

“Hey!” I scowled. “You watch it!”

“You were about to fly into the path of a bullet,” Ratchet explained testily. Only someone with crazy heightened senses like his could’ve seen that. “You’re welcome.”

Looking down, I saw that most of our army was scattering for cover, but Holden and the bug boys were running full speed toward the M-Geeks. Bullets ricocheted off the armored mutants, and though Holden should’ve been full of holes, his elastic cells regenerated at such a high frequency that they barely slowed him down.

Closer to me, Gazzy teetered on the shoulders of another M-Geek, determinedly slamming a big rock on its head. But the head didn’t split like an orange as
before—they’d evolved. Instead, the gloved hand reached for Gazzy, grabbed him by his messy blond hair, and slammed him forward onto the ground, where Harry was already mewling in pain. The robot pointed his gun arm, execution style, at my wounded friends.

I got ready to dive.

Time for a reunion, Geeky.

But before I could drop, Dylan shot past me. He reached the M-Geek first, tearing him off Gazzy and smashing the armored face until the metal actually dented.

I started to look for another M-Geek, but I saw we had bigger problems to worry about.

Beyond the bodies fighting on the field around me, I saw something else charging out of the forest. My mouth hung slack.

It was a parade of enemies past come back to haunt me. Some had the snarling, wolfish snouts of Erasers. Some were cyborg Flyboys. Others looked like something entirely new: droids made of metal or giants whose hands could easily snap bodies in half.

I spotted a huge man with a slick bald head and cruel eyes—a carbon copy of the giant I’d met in Africa, who’d told me his buddies would be back to rip me apart. I narrowed my eyes.

This one’s mine.

Dropping fast, I snap-kicked the backs of his knees, and when the big oaf buckled, I jumped up and jammed my fingers into his eyes, following with a quick uppercut to the chin.

Now I’d made him mad.

Roaring with pain and anger, he lunged toward me. Suddenly a powerful kick exploded against his left side—right to the kidney—and the giant collapsed in agony.

Kate.

“What are you doing?” I groaned, clenching my fists.

“Helping,” Kate grunted as she heaved the whimpering giant up onto her shoulders. The giant had to outweigh Kate by about three hundred pounds, but she lifted him over her head as if he were a toy. She spun around and hurled him across the field, where he crashed against a tree and slid to the ground.

“I don’t need help,” I insisted.

This was a battle. A battle in which, with the Horsemen and the Doomsday kids together, we were vastly outnumbered. Kids were injured all around us, putting their lives on the line, and I should be pulling my weight, fighting alongside them. I
wanted
to fight, more than anything.

But no one would freaking let me!

I felt a dull blade trying to hack into the back of my thigh and whipped around just as I felt it scratch my skin. It was a Doomsday kid with fierce eyes, and I grinned. At last!

I drew my arm back for a sucker punch, but right then there was a head-shattering noise that made my ears feel like they were bleeding and my brain feel like it was liquidating. I gritted my teeth, working through the pain of the audio assault, but I noticed the Doomsday kids weren’t faring so well. Not just the kid in front of me, but all across
the field, they were blinking in confusion, and their weapons clattered to the ground.

The sound was breaking their hypnosis.

A tornado-like blur whirled across the field. When it finally stopped spinning, the sound cut out, and Star, the last member of Fang’s gang, stood there smirking. “I remembered I had some unfinished business,” she explained with a shrug.

With the Doomsdayers no longer a threat, I realized we might just have a chance at winning this thing. I looked around, quickly taking stock. The Horsemen had been unfazed by Star’s brain-melting noise. Our kids were ganging up on them now, but even against ten of our soldiers, the new mutants were fierce, clearly made to be killing machines.

My heart beat faster as I scanned the muddied mess for my flock.

There were Nudge and Total, getting their revenge against a Cryena with the help of the silo girls.

Iggy, Ratchet, and Star were using their collective supersenses to make a metal mutant shake all over, until sparks shot out of its fingertips.

I inhaled the distinctive stink of greasy canine fur. An Eraser on steroids was making a beeline for me, and I took to the air and assumed an offensive stance. My muscles quivered with readiness, waiting for the ballet of an aerial fight stacked way against me.

That didn’t happen, though, because Dylan slammed
into the Eraser first,
again
, getting between us and snapping its jaw with a well-aimed kick.

“You can’t take on everyone!” I yelled angrily as Boy Wonder finished off Teen Wolf. “I have dibs on that Eraser over there,” I said, pointing.
“OKAY?!”

“Max, wait!” Dylan grabbed for my arm. “You can’t fight right now—don’t be stupid.”

My eyes almost bugged out of my head. If there was ever a time that I was going to actually rip someone’s head off, it was then. I was many things, but I was
not
stupid.

“Wh-what I mean is,” Dylan stuttered, seeing the rage in my eyes, “now that the Doomsday kids are down, the entrance is clear.” He pointed, and I saw it was true. “I think our soldiers can handle the rest of the Horsemen.… So do you want to meet the Remedy, or not?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Now you’re talking.”

NOT THAT FINDING the Remedy was so easy. Underground, I followed Dylan through the dank tunnels filled with stale air, and I was pretty sure we were going in circles.

“It didn’t look like this before,” Dylan explained. “It was a huge city, with skyscrapers and neon lights.”

“Uh-huh. And what is this, the subway station?” In every direction, all I saw were damp, sloped walls lit by faint tracking lights.

“I mean they were three-D projections,” Dylan said irritably. “And my eyesight isn’t so great after Gazzy’s explosion in the silo, okay? Here. I think this is the door to the lab.”

“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.

“I should have done something sooner,” Star said.

I shifted slightly on the paper-covered bed to look at her.

“When I first found out what that maniac was doing, I should’ve stood up to him,” Star went on.

“You were scared,” Kate said. She propped me up with sturdy arms. “We all were.”

Star started to pick her way through the shards of glass,
sharp tools, and overturned carts her tornado had created in the lab, but stopped right before the door.

“Fang didn’t deserve that,” she whispered, not looking at me.

No, he didn’t, and I hadn’t forgiven Star for what she’d done.

But Fang would have. He would have been proud of her for coming now, and she should know that.

“Hero,” I mumbled, pointing at her. It was the best I could manage with drool still leaking from my mouth.

Star laughed harshly, and she finally faced me, her eyes glistening. “Yeah, well, we’re all just trying to save the world, right? Isn’t that what you flock kids keep yammering about? Let’s finish this, already.”