82
THE FIGHT UNFOLDED like background noise. White noise. In the foreground, even with his ghastly pale face looking dead in my hands, my fingers clenching his ragged hair, all I could see was random images of Fang, not dead.
Fang telling me stupid fart jokes from the dog crate next to mine at the School, trying to make me laugh.
Fang asleep at Jeb’s old house, and me jumping wildly on his bed to wake him up. Him pretending to be asleep. Me laughing when I “accidentally” kicked him where it counts. Him dumping me off the bed.
Fang gagging on my first attempt at cooking dinner after Jeb disappeared. Him spitting out the mac and cheese. Me dumping the rest of the bowl on him in response.
Fang on the beach, that first time he was badly injured. Me realizing how I felt about him.
Fang kissing me. So close I couldn’t even see his dark eyes anymore. The first time. The second time. The third.
I could remember each and every one of them. Would always remember them.
Fang.
Not.
Dead.
83
THEN A COUPLE of my nerves started firing again, and my muscles unfroze.
“Fang! Come back!” I started pulling his hair. Shaking his head and shoulders. Hard. “Wake up! Snap out of it! You stupid jerk! I am going to kill you if you die on me!”
I put my mouth up to his ear. “Did you hear me?” I was yelling right into it. “Dying is not on the agenda! Not part of my plan!”
That wasn’t working. I pounded on his chest. “Get up! After everything we’ve been through, are you going to give up now? Are you that much of a wuss? We need you, you butthead! I need you. I – I love you, Fang.”
I was choking on dry sobs now. “Did you hear that?
Why I didn’t I tell you before? You can’t die before I tell you that. You can’t!”
Gulping, I looked around wildly, as if I would see something marked “Second chances. use sparingly.” All I saw were a bunch of unconscious guards, bloody bird kids, and a lizard boy.
And a large hypodermic needle, on the stand holding medical equipment next to Fang’s bed. The tube was marked “Adrenaline. Dangerous.”
I reached for it. I had seen this movie once -
“I tried that!” said Dr. Disaster, who was tightly in Dylan’s grip. “Don’t you think I tried that? I shot it into his IV! It did nothing!”
In a split second I grabbed the hypo, whirled, and sank the needle deep into Fang’s chest, directly into his heart. I pressed the plunger home, emptying its entire contents. If he had any chance at all, this was it. And if it wouldn’t save his life, then it would surely end it once and for all, right now.
Being a leader means you have to make life-or-death decisions sometimes. And I made this one.
84
TIME BECAME ELASTIC, stretching out endlessly. Each second seemed to take hours. Everyone was moving in slow motion, all blurry, all dreamy. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I got an impression of Iggy and Gazzy holding Robert down, trying to pull off his new head, without success. I saw Nudge and Angel hugging. Angel was crying.
One by one they turned to look at me and Fang, concern and pain on their faces.
I looked down at Fang, at that smooth, tan place on his neck where his pulse should have been beating. I squeezed his cold hand hard, willing him to squeeze back. I dropped my head to his chest and closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the machine flatlining in front of me.
Fang, come on, I thought. You promised you would never leave me. You promised. I gulped again, hearing nothing, feeling nothing under my ear. This can’t be, can’t be, can’t be… Oh, God, help me, help me…
My mind was starting to completely shut down in order not to feel this pain, when I heard a beep.
Then another beep.
Then I felt Fang’s chest rise as he gasped in a breath, and I felt his heart beat, right under my cheek.
I bolted upright, staring at his face. His mouth opened. His good eye widened. I grabbed his hand in both of mine and clasped it hard against my chest. I couldn’t say anything, could only stare at that poor, battered face I loved so much.
Fang blinked hazily and breathed in again. His gaze fell on me, and I must have looked wild with panic and misery.
“Fang?” I gasped.
He blinked, tried to swallow. “ ‘Ssup?” he said groggily.
I’m pretty much of the stoical school of emotiveness, but everything I was feeling burst through me like a flood through a dam. I dropped my head back onto his chest, my arms around him, and sobbed.
85
“LET ME GO! I command you!” I heard Dr. Gunther-Hagen shout. “Have you lost your mind? Have you forgotten who I am?” I looked around and saw Dylan, flecked with blood and sporting a black eye, grasping the doctor from behind. He was staring at the doctor with fury, even hatred.
“I think you’ve forgotten who I am,” Dylan countered. “That is, not a robot. Someone with a mind of his own.”
“But you – you owe me your life!” Dr. G-H stammered.
“I’m not sure I want this life,” Dylan said sadly. And he looked at me and Fang.
The doctor’s eyes got even wider as he became fully aware of Fang’s regained consciousness. “This doesn’t make sense!”
“You don’t make sense!” I bit out through my tears. “We’re not just test subjects! We’re not just for experimenting! You people never learn!”
“I see it all clearly now,” Dylan said in an oddly flat, quiet voice. “I see what you are. I see what you made me. And I see what I’ll become.” He looked over at another gurney a few yards away from him. “Iggy, can you help me with this? Grab his legs.”
Iggy and Dylan lifted the struggling doctor onto the gurney. “Gazzy, Nudge, Angel, you too. We need help strapping him down.”
I was dumbfounded as I watched my flock restrain this evil genius on a gurney. As had been done to us so many times in our lives.
But the next thing surprised me even more.
Dylan picked up another fully loaded giant hypo from the tray next to Fang’s bed. “This should do nicely.” He readied the needle like a trained nurse. It was obvious that he’d been raised on injections.
Dr. Gunther-Hagen craned his head to look around at his lab, now destroyed; his guards, now useless; his subject Fang, now saved. And his master creation, Dylan, who looked as though he wanted to kill him.
“That’s what I call giving someone a taste of their own medicine,” Gazzy whispered.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Dylan,” the doctor said.
“Let’s pin his arm down, please,” Dylan directed quietly, and placed the tip of the needle on the vein. He was like a beautiful, powerful avenging angel.
And yet – he was… scary.
Nudge bit her lip. Angel looked confused. Iggy didn’t look anything.
I suddenly had a flash of myself saying something – it seemed like years ago. Someday we might have only a few seconds to figure out the meaning of life.
“Oh, God, Dylan – don’t,” I found myself pleading. “It’s just – enough. Enough already.”
Dylan stopped. Just like that. “Okay, Max.”
He looked at me, then at Fang, then at the doctor.
Then he plunged the needle into his own arm.
EPILOGUE
AFTER EVERYTHING, we’ve come to this, I thought.
I felt weird in my fancy dress, but even I had to admit it was gorgeous. Someone had come to the house this morning and fixed all of our hair – Angel’s golden halo of curls had never looked so perfect. Or so clean. Nudge looked even more like a teen model than usual, with her long, honey-streaked brown ringlets falling in perfect array around her shoulders. They were wearing matching dresses of russet silk. I glanced down at my cream-colored one, praying that I didn’t get dirt or blood on it before this was all over.