Her small shoulders sagged, and her face looked sad.
Be strong, Maximum, I told myself. You know what you gotta do.
"I have lots of special powers," she said. "I deserve to be the leader. I deserve to be saved. I'm much, much more special than you or Fang."
"You just keep telling yourself that," I said coldly. "But don't expect me to get on board."
Her heart-shaped face turned mutinous. "I don't need you to get on board, Max." Her voice had an edge of steel in it. She'd learned that from me. What else had she learned? "This is all happening whether you're on board or not. You're going to be retired soon, anyway." She took an angry bite of cookie.
"Maybe. But if I am, I'm going to come back and haunt you, every day for the rest of your hard, traitorous little life."
Her eyes widened, and she actually took a step back.
"Okay, that's enough, you two," said Jeb, just the way he used to when some of us would mix it up back in the day.
"Whatever," I said in my trademark bored tone. I stepped around them, avoiding any touch as if they were poison, and headed down the hall. My heart was pounding, and I felt an unwelcome flush heat my cheeks.
Ari caught up to me. We walked in silence for a while, then he said, as if offering a consolation prize, "They're building an army, you know."
Of course they are, I thought, feeling depressed. "How do you know?"
"I've seen them. There's a whole hangar full of Flyboys, hanging up, charging. They have thousands, and they're making more all the time. They're growing Eraser skins in the lab."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
He frowned, looking confused. Then he shrugged. "I don't know. I've always seen you fight. Even though I know you can't get out of this, it's like I still want you to know what you're up against."
"Are you setting me up?" I asked bluntly. "Is this a trap? I mean, even more of a trap than it obviously already is?"
He shook his head. "No. It's just...I know I'm never getting out of here. My time's over. I guess part of me hopes you still have a chance."
It made some sort of sad, pathetic sense.
"Oh, I'm getting out of here, I promise you." And maybe, just maybe, I would take him with us.
50
Under the general heading "Torturing the Bird Kids, Part Deux," you might find a whitecoat handing us a cardboard box that night.
We opened it carefully, expecting it to explode in our faces.
Inside, we found a slim wrapped package. It was a picture frame, book size but no thicker than a pencil. Of course Gazzy was the first one to press the red button on the side.
The frame bloomed into life, and there it was: that same picture Fang and I had found, once in a crack house in DC and once in Dr. Martinez's house. I swallowed hard, thinking about her. Wondering if she was real. Hoping she was okay. Trying to figure out what her deal was.
The picture was of baby Gasman, with his telltale cowlick, being held by a woman who looked kind of tired and washed out. He was plump and happy, maybe a few months old.
Then the picture started moving, not like a movie but like the actual picture was just...moving. The image zoomed in and rotated, as if we were walking around the woman and focusing on Gazzy. Then the picture pulled back and swung around. We saw an ugly room, with cracked walls and dirty windows. Was that the squatter's house we'd visited in Washington? Before it had become a bombed-out haven for thugs?
The camera focused on a wooden table, then on a slip of paper lying on the table. Again it enlarged and sharpened, enough so that we could read the paper.
It was a check. The name it was made out to was obliterated. The check was from Itex, for $10,000.
Gazzy coughed slightly, and I felt him trying to control himself.
His mother had sold him for $10,000 to the whitecoats at the School.
51
I didn't know why only Gazzy's life was in the picture frame, or why none of the rest of us got one. Those whitecoats sure liked to keep us guessing!
We all checked one another for expiration dates, but none of us had them. Yet. But you know, when you've faced imminent death as often as we have, it gets a little old, frankly. Our room had no windows, so we had zero reference for time passing. We fought off boredom by coming up with plans to escape, courses of action to take. I led the flock through all kinds of scenarios, how we could use each one to our advantage.
That's what leaders do.
"Now, let's say they come get us," I started for the hundredth time.
"And, like, the halls are full of zebras," Iggy muttered sarcastically.
"And suddenly tons of bubbles are everywhere," said the Gasman.
"And then everyone starts eating beef jerky," Nudge suggested.
"Yeah," said Iggy, rubbing his hands together. "I'll grab a zebra; Gaz, you fill all the bubbles with your trademark scent, so people are choking and gagging; and let's throw beef jerky right into their eyes! Now, that's a plan!"
They all collapsed into laughter, and even Fang grinned at me as I gazed sourly at the flock.
"I just want us to be prepared," I said.
"Yeah-prepared to die," said Iggy.
"We're not going to die!" I snapped. "Not now, not anytime soon!"
"What about our expiration dates?" Gazzy asked. "They could show up any second. And what about stupid Angel, turning on us?"
There was a lot I wanted to say to him about that, but now wasn't the time.
I opened my mouth to spout some reassuring lies, but the door opened.
We tensed, turning quickly to see a whitecoat coming at us, armed with a clipboard. He checked his notes and pushed his glasses up on his nose.
"Okay," he said briskly. "I need the blind one and the one that can mimic voices." He looked up expectantly as we stared at him.
"Are you on drugs?" I asked in disbelief.
"Me? No," he said, looking confused. He tapped his pen against his clipboard. "We need to run some last tests."
I crossed my arms over my chest as Fang and I instinctively moved between the whitecoat and the rest of the flock.
"I don't think so," I said.
The whitecoat looked surprised at my noncompliance-obviously he hadn't read all of our case notes. "No, come along now," he said, striving for authoritative and achieving only weenie.
"You're kidding, right?" I asked. "Unless you're packing a submachine gun, you're flat out of luck, buddy."
He frowned. "Look, how about they just come along peacefully, and there won't be any trouble."
"Uh...how about, no?"
"What kind of trouble?" Gazzy asked from behind me. "I mean, anything to break the boredom."
The whitecoat tried to look stern. "Look, we're trying to explore other options to your retirement," he said. "You might be useful to us in other ways. Only people who are useful will survive the By-Half Plan. Actually, it's really more like the One-in-a-Thousand Plan. Only people with useful skills will be necessary in the new order, the Re-Evolution. You should want to help us find out if you're at all useful to us alive."
"Because we're probably not that useful dead," Nudge said thoughtfully.
"No," I agreed. "Well, maybe as doorstops."
The whitecoat made an "eew" expression.
"Or like those things in a parking lot that show where the cars should stop," suggested Iggy. He closed his eyes and went stiff, to demonstrate what it would look like.
"Also an option," I conceded, while the whitecoat looked horrified.
"No," he said, scrambling for composure. "But China is interested in using you as weapons."
That was interesting. "Well, you tell China to bite us," I said. "Now, skedaddle on out of here, before we turn you into a doorstop."
"Come for testing," he tried firmly one last time.
"Come back to reality," I said, just as firmly.
He turned angrily and headed for the door. Gazzy looked at me, like, Should we rush him, push past him? I shook my head: Not now.