"First question," said the Director. The crowd turned to watch me and Omega in our duel of wits. "The castle walls are eighteen feet high, seven feet thick, and one thousand, twenty-seven feet long. One cubic yard of stone and mortar weighs one thousand, one hundred twenty pounds, or exactly half a ton. How many tons of stone and mortar are contained within the walls?"
Omega looked off into the distance, obviously starting to calculate.
"You are kidding me," I said. "Why would I ever need to know that?"
"Like, if you had to make repairs?" Nudge guessed.
"Couldn't I just hire a wall repair company?" I asked.
"It's a simple calculation," said the Director, still smug.
"Yeah? Let's see you do it."
Her cheeks flushed, but she stood tall. "Are you conceding?"
"I'm not conceding anything," I said. "I'm just saying it's completely pointless. How about I just pick a lock instead? Me and Omega. Let's see who can do it faster."
"Two thousand, three hundred ninety-six point three three tons," said Omega.
"Okay, smartyboots, how about if you're flying at eighteen thousand feet at, say, a hundred and forty miles an hour," I said. "You're facing a southwest wind of about seven knots. How long would it take you to fly from Philadelphia to Billings, Montana?"
Omega frowned as he started to work the math.
"Are you saying you know how to make that calculation?" the Director asked.
"I'm saying I'm smart enough to know that I'll get there when I get there!" I almost shouted. "The questions themselves are dumb: They don't have anything to do with being able to survive."
"In the new world they do, Max," said the Director. "Maybe not in your world. But your world is over."
119
I was having a really bad day. These tests were a waste of time. I was expecting to get jolted with a lightning bolt of electricity at any moment. I was losing to a boy. Still remaining in this contest was a fight to the death.
And Fang still wasn't here.
I knew he hadn't had enough time to get here. There was a reasonable hope that he could be here within the next six hours or so. But he wasn't here now, and I was reaching my breaking point.
I looked at Nudge and Angel. Nudge seemed very tense, and her fingers were curling at her sides. Angel had that scary intent expression she got right before she convinced a stranger to do something. All of a sudden, I remembered that Dr. Martinez was my real mom. Probably. I'd been lied to so many times that it was hard for me to accept anything as fact. But she might have been my real mom.
I wanted to see her. And my sister, Ella.
I needed to get out of here.
Next to Angel, one of the mutants frowned, looking confused. She blinked. I saw Angel stare at her, concentrating. Uh-oh. Then the mutant leaned to the one next to her and whispered something so softly I couldn't hear it.
Angel looked pleased, and my stomach knotted up.
"What's going on, sweetie?" I whispered through clenched teeth.
"Things are going to get exciting," Angel said with satisfaction.
"Define 'exciting,'" I said cautiously.
Angel thought. "Everyone freaking out?" she offered.
"Uh...in a good way?"
"In an exciting way," she said, watching the crowd.
"Now we come to the definitive battle," the Director said into the loudspeaker.
Right then, all heck broke loose. The best way to describe it would be to say that suddenly everyone drank crazy juice and went haywire. Mutants spontaneously began fighting with one another. Some of them had clearly been trained to be soldiers, but there was quite a bit of catfight face-slapping and shoving going on too.
"People!" the Director yelled into her loudspeaker. "People! What is going on?"
"They don't want to be here anymore," Angel said, watching them.
"We don't want to be here anymore!" the crowd yelled.
"They're tired of being treated like numbers and experiments," Angel explained.
"We're not numbers!" I heard angry voices cry. "We're not experiments!"
"Hmm," I said, scanning the area, looking for ways to escape.
"They feel like pawns," Angel went on.
"We're not just pawns!" the mutants yelled.
"They're people too, even if they were just cloned and created," Angel said, stepping closer to me and taking my hand.
"We're people too!" voices shouted. "We're people too!"
"O-kaaay," I said, and quickly gathered Nudge, Angel, Ari, and Total. "Let's get out of here. We'll make our way to the wall and go along it till we see a way to break out." They nodded and we began to move through the crowd, dodging flying fists and angry shoving.
"Robots!" yelled the Director, and everywhere, the robots stood at attention and armed their weapons. "Get this crowd under control!"
120
Yeah, because it wasn't bad enough, with everyone fighting. Now we had to get the bloodthirsty robots involved. And they had guns.
We continued to push through the crowd, trying to reach a castle wall. I saw Flyboys starting to wade into the crowd of angry, fighting people.
"Why are they fighting each other?" Nudge asked, close to my shoulder. "They should all gang up on the Flyboys."
Angel looked around. "Oh. Yeah."
She stood still for a minute, her brow furrowed with mighty concentration. Then, one by one, all around us, mutants slowed down in their fight, looked around, then turned to attack the Flyboys.
I grabbed Angel's hand and started to push through the crowd again, keeping low. "You are a scary, scary child, you know that?" I asked her.
She smiled.
I almost walked right into a thick line of Flyboys. Looking up, I saw solemn Eraser faces with glowing red robot eyes.
"You must stop," intoned one.
"I disagree." In an instant I launched myself at it, trying to knock it off balance. It was the second-to-last model, and I knocked its weapon out of its hands.
But not fast enough to avoid another Flyboy clocking me in the head with the butt of its gun. I staggered as a starburst of pain exploded behind my ear. A second later, warm blood started running down into my collar.
My flock sprang into action. Nudge jumped high in the air, whipping out her wings to hover below the electrified net but above the fray. Total chomped down hard on a Flyboy's ankle, and I could hear his fangs hit the metal below the thin layer of skin.
"The base of their spines!" I heard a voice call from behind.
I spun to see Jeb wading through the crowd toward us, dodging punches and kicks. "Hit the Flyboys at the base of their spines," he said. "It's a design flaw."
I had zero reason to trust him, despite all his yapping about being my dad, blah blah blah. Still, I had nothing to lose. Wheeling, I escaped my Flyboy and whipped around in back of another one. As hard as I could, I aimed a flying sideways kick with both feet right at its tailbone area.
Crack! Its legs crumpled, and it snapped forward from the hips, unable to move. A couple seconds later, the red glow in its eyes faded.
Huh. Whadaya know.
121
Then it was like a flashback to when I was eleven years old, fighting side by side with Jeb. He was the one who'd taught us to fight so well, to win at any cost. It was Jeb who'd taught us to never play fair, never telegraph our punches, always use any means to win a battle. Now, with him taking out Flyboys right next to me, it was just like those training days, like I was a little kid again, pretending he was my dad.
"Block it!" Jeb yelled, yanking me off memory lane. Instinctively I threw my arm up in time to block a Flyboy's overhand punch.