Well, I get under people's skins. It's a gift I have, what can I say?
47
Ter Borcht looked at his assistant. "Let's get on vis de questioning," he said abruptly. Turning to me, he said, "Ve need to gather some final data. Den you vill be exterminated."
"Ooh," I said. "If I had boots on, I'd be quaking in them." I tapped my bare toes against the floor.
I saw a quick flare of anger in his eyes.
"No, really," I said, mucho sincerely. "Totally quaking, I promise. You're really a very scary man."
"First you," he barked suddenly at Gazzy, and Gazzy couldn't help jumping a tiny bit. I looked at him reassuringly and winked, and his narrow shoulders straightened.
"Vhat ozzer abilities do you haf?" ter Borcht snapped, while his assistant waited, pen in hand.
Gazzy thought. "I have X-ray vision," he said. He peered at ter Borcht's chest, then blinked and looked alarmed.
Ter Borcht was startled for a second, but then he frowned. "Don't write dat down," he told his assistant in irritation. The assistant froze in midsentence.
Glaring at the Gasman, ter Borcht said, "Your time is coming to an end, you pathetic failure of an experiment. Vhat you say now is how you vill be remembered."
Gazzy's blue eyes flashed. "Then you can remember me telling you to kiss my-"
"Enough!" ter Borcht said. He turned suddenly to Nudge. "You. Do you haf any qualities dat distinguish you in any way?"
Nudge chewed on a fingernail. "You mean, like, besides the wings?" She shook her shoulders gently, and her beautiful fawn-colored wings unfolded a bit.
His face flushed, and I felt like cheering. "Yes," he said stiffly. "Besides de vings."
"Hmm. Besides de vings." Nudge tapped one finger against her chin. "Um..." Her face brightened. "I once ate nine Snickers bars in one sitting. Without barfing. That was a record!"
"Hardly a special talent," ter Borcht said witheringly.
Nudge was offended. "Yeah? Let's see you do it."
"I vill now eat nine Snickers bars," Gazzy said in a perfect, creepy imitation of ter Borcht's voice, "visout bahfing."
Ter Borcht wheeled on him as I smothered a giggle. It wasn't funny when Gazzy did a pitch-perfect imitation of me, but it was hilarious when he did it to other people.
"Mimicry," ter Borcht said to his assistant. "Write dat down."
Walking over to Iggy, he poked him with his shoe. "Does anysing on you vork properly?"
Iggy rubbed his forehead with one hand. "Well, I have a highly developed sense of irony."
Ter Borcht tsked. "You are a liability to your group. I assume you alvays hold on to someone's shirt, yes? Following dem closely?"
"Only when I'm trying to steal their dessert," Iggy said truthfully.
"Write that down," I told the assistant. "He's a notorious dessert stealer."
Ter Borcht moved over to Fang and stood examining him as if he were a zoo exhibit. Fang looked back at him, and probably only I could see his tension, the fury roiling inside him.
"You don't speak much, do you?" ter Borcht said, circling him slowly.
Fittingly, Fang said nothing.
"Vhy do you let a girl be de leader?" ter Borcht asked, a calculating look in his eye.
"She's the tough one," Fang said.
Dang right, I thought proudly.
"Is dere anysing special about you?" asked ter Borcht. "Anysing vorth saving?"
Fang pretended to think, gazing up at the ceiling. "Besides my fashion sense? I play a mean harmonica."
Ter Borcht locked his gaze on me. "Vhy haf you trained dem to act stupid dis vay?"
They weren't stupid. They were survivors.
"Why do you still let your mother dress you?" I countered snidely.
The assistant busily started writing that down but froze at a look from ter Borcht.
The scientist stepped closer to me, looking down menacingly. "I created you," he said softly. "As de saying goes, I brought you into dis world, and I vill take you out of it."
"I vill now destroy de Snickuhs bahrs!" Gazzy barked. Then the five of us were laughing-literally in the face of death.
48
"Oops," I said once we were alone again. "Guess they forgot to program us with any respect for authority."
"Those idiots," Gazzy said, scuffing his foot against the floor.
We were feeling victorious, but it was still clear: We were captive, and right now they held all the tarot cards.
"I miss Total," said Nudge.
I sighed. "If he ever existed."
"We didn't imagine the hawks...or the bats," Nudge said.
"Yeah," said Iggy. "We didn't imagine those creepy subway tunnels in New York."
"Or the headhunter, at that school," said Gazzy.
"I know. I'm sure we didn't," I said, though actually I wasn't, not a hundred percent, anyway.
Ari came and got me again that afternoon. This time I was actually allowed to walk. Wee-hah!
"I don't trust him. Keep your eyes open," Fang murmured as I was leaving.
"Ya think?" I whispered back.
"So what's this all about, Ari?" I asked, as we passed some whitecoats who looked at us strangely. "How come we're taking these little tours?"
Now that I wasn't strapped to a lead wheelchair, I was memorizing every hall, every doorway, every window.
He looked uncomfortable and still subdued. For a wolverine, anyway. "I'm not sure," he muttered. "They just said walk her around."
"Ah," I said. "So we can assume there's something they want me to see. Besides the brain on a stick and the superbabies."
Ari shrugged. "I don't know. They don't tell me anything."
Just then we passed wide double doors, and one of them swung open as we went by. A whitecoat hurried from the room beyond, but not before I'd caught a glimpse inside.
On a large video screen that took up a whole wall, I saw a map of the world. My raptor vision took in a thousand details in a second, which I digested as Ari and I walked. Each country was outlined, and one city in each country was highlighted.
Above the map was a title card, THE BY-HALF PLAN. I'd heard of that somewhere before.
On an off chance that it would actually get me somewhere, I asked Ari, "So, what's the By-Half Plan?"
Ari shrugged. "They're planning to reduce the world's population by half," he explained morosely.
I almost stopped in my tracks but remembered to keep walking and to look disinterested. "Geez, by half? That's what, three billion people? They're ambitious little buggers."
My mind was reeling at the idea of genocide on that level. It made Stalin and Hitler look like kindergarten teachers. Okay, really evil kindergarten teachers, but still.
Ari shrugged again, and I realized it was hard for him to get worked up about things when he was going to die any day now.
I thought about what else I had seen, and it suddenly hit me: I'd seen some of this stuff before, like in a movie, or a dream, or in...one of those skull-splitting infodumps I used to get. For a while I'd had intensely horrible headaches, where it felt like my brain was imploding inside my skull. Then tons of images, words, sounds, stuff would scroll through my consciousness. I realized that some of what I was seeing, saying, doing right now-I'd already seen it.
Think, think.
I was still concentrating when we turned a corner and I literally ran into someone. Two someones.
Jeb and Angel.
49
"Max! Sweetheart," said Jeb. "I'm glad they're letting you get some exercise."
I stared at him. "So I'll be in really good shape when they kill me?"
He winced and sort of cleared his throat.
"Hi, Max," said Angel.
I just looked at her.
"You should really try one of these cookies," she said, holding out a chocolate-chip chunk of treason.
"Thanks. I'll make a note of it. You lying traitor."
"Max-you know I had to do what was right," she said. "You weren't making the best decisions anymore."
"Yeah, like the one when I decided to come rescue your skinny, ungrateful butt," I said.