“Just say the word,” Fang said to me under his breath. My hands clenched into fists as I prepared to kill the man who had taken Angel from us, to tear him limb from limb. Dylan readied himself beside me.
“I’m not a threat, children,” Mark said, still wearing that crazed, happy expression of his. He took a step forward and the six of us stepped back instinctively. “This was all for you. At last, it’s begun.” Mark paused, looking bemusedly around at the destruction, at the burned wreckage, as if not really understanding what had happened. “It’s begun,” he repeated. Another beatific smile. “My work here is done. I’ve saved the planet. Saved it, protected it for the select few. And you, my friends, will benefit.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. If there’s anything worse than a psychopath, it’s one who thinks he’s doing his evil deeds for a good reason. “How has all this”—I waved my arm to encompass our surroundings—“saved the planet? How was what you did in Paris protecting the planet?” I was shrieking in his face, rage dripping from my every word.
His eyes were peaceful. “You’ll see,” he assured me. He glanced down at his burned arms, the flesh flayed open and raw. He didn’t seem to be feeling anything. He looked up, his eyes coming to rest on one shattered window. Its wire-embedded glass had been twisted outward by some explosive force. Mark examined it: a novelty. Then he turned back to us. “You’ll see,” he repeated. “The contagion has been unleashed. Now all will come to pass. And you’ll thank me for it.”
“Not likely,” I said, advancing toward him. “The only contagion I’m aware of is you and your insane cult. Now, if you don’t tell us where you took—”
“Take care of the earth, my children,” Mark interrupted, still smiling.
And then he threw himself out the window.
We have lightning-fast reflexes, but none of us got to him in time—it had happened so fast, with no warning. Horrified, we ran to the window and looked out. We weren’t up very high, but he’d landed on a pile of broken concrete. Shafts of rusty rebar stuck up at different angles, one of them directly through Mark’s throat.
He still had that pleasant smile on his face, but his eyes stared blankly into nothing.
“Unhhh,” Nudge groaned, and then vomited on the floor at my feet.
As I rubbed her back, I felt warm hands on my shoulders, and for a second I couldn’t tell if it was Dylan or Fang. Then Fang moved into my line of sight, scowling. It was Dylan who stood behind me.
I stared down at Mark’s body and felt bile rising in my own throat. “Well, that’s… that,” I said shakily, moving away from the window.
“So, we continue searching for Angel?” Dylan asked quietly.
I nodded. “We always continue searching for Angel.”
55
WE SEARCHED THE whole place, and my heart sank lower with every empty room. Not that the rooms were actually empty. They were full of the stuff of nightmares: bloodstained operating tables, cabinets full of horrifying tools, jars of specimens that made my stomach turn. Only Iggy would avoid having these appalling images seared into his brain. The rest of us would carry them forever, like scars.
Nudge reached out and took my hand, held it tightly as we looked at another huge jar holding a preserved experiment. Oh, God.
“Evil. So evil,” I muttered, feeling heartsick.
This had to be where Angel had been kept captive, ever since Paris. I didn’t say anything to the others, but a black fog was starting to shroud my aching heart. How could she have survived this? And if she had survived it, how would she ever recover? Not just physically, but emotionally. We’d already been through more than anyone should have to go through. What if she’d finally been pushed over the edge? What if she could never come back?
After yet another horrifying sight made me gag, I leaned against the wall and rubbed my eyes, which stung from the lingering smoke and chemical fumes. My throat was scratchy and dry, and it ached from the effort of suppressing my cries of shock and horror.
“She’s not here,” Gazzy said tonelessly, sitting down on a broken beam. “Or if she’s here, she’s part of the ashes.” His voice broke.
“Let’s start over again, from the first building,” Dylan said, squeezing Gazzy’s shoulder. He sounded tired but determined.
“No,” said Fang. “We should take to the sky, do recon, and see if they left tracks—whoever escaped, I mean. She could be with them.”
“You think some people escaped?” Nudge’s face was drawn.
Fang nodded. “Someone always escapes.”
This had all been for nothing. My baby was still gone.
Don’t give up, Max.
My Voice was very, very faint. It had never before sounded like it was talking to me from as far away as the moon; I almost thought I’d imagined it.
Then I saw something through the dust on the floor. I pushed aside some charred beams and uncovered a metal trapdoor, maybe two feet by two feet and padlocked from the outside.
“Nudge?” I whispered.
Closing her eyes, she swept her sensitive fingers over the lock several times. I didn’t know how or why she could affect metal with her touch, but I was glad she could. Her fingers trembled with both effort and emotion, and we all clung to the hope that there might be one more place we hadn’t looked.
The lock sprang open in her hand, and we yanked the doors open.
A narrow metal staircase led down into darkness.
I went down first, my senses screaming with alertness. It took my eyes a couple of seconds to adjust to the lack of light, but at my first quick scan, we seemed to be in a small room.
An empty room.
I felt a terrible pain in my chest as my heart constricted with grief. There was nowhere else to look. Angel was either dead or being rushed to another secret facility, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to withstand this torture until we could find her again.
The tears I had been holding back during our search suddenly started streaming down my face. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to fly out of there and never come back. Let the world take care of itself from now on. I was done.
As I turned to rush out, my eyes fell on a small back room, behind the stairs we had just come down. I reached the doorway in two strides.
A feathery, dirty heap was strapped to a table in one cold corner.
“Angel?” I whispered, not letting myself believe it could be her. We knew there were other winged kids out there. It would be too good to be true….
I took a few more steps toward the figure, and then collapsed to the floor beside it. I knew that face, that hair, no matter how wrecked they had become.
Trust me, it’s impossible to describe the rush that happens when your whole soul shifts, in an instant, from despair and loss to realizing that maybe it was all just a horrible lie, a nightmare—that hope is truly alive.
“Angel!” I cried, sobbing and stroking matted curls away from her grimy face, while Fang immediately started dismantling the clamps. “Angel! We’re right here. We came to get you. Angel—wake up!”
I gently cradled her head, which lolled back. Was it really her? Or just… her body?
I got no response. As soon as Fang was finished with the clamps I gathered her up, and it felt like I was holding Styrofoam. There was hardly anything there, as if she hadn’t eaten since Paris. Numerous puncture wounds dotted both arms. How many times could my baby be torn from me and survive it?