"That was a good idea," said Fang. Which was about five more words than he'd said all day.
I shrugged. I knew Max was totally full of herself, but that didn't mean I had to be. We started moving through the air vent system.
I was trying to remember to seem nervous, to look around, to act like I was considering which way to go. Sometimes I stopped everyone and put my finger to my lips, as if someone were coming. It was hysterical.
We got to the main branch of the HVAC system, and I pretended to hesitate before I led them all into the vent that went to the basement. Just a few more minutes, another couple hundred yards, and my job would be over.
And so would they.
128
Being back in the isolation tank after seeing Jeb was a huge relief-for about two milliseconds. Then I started thinking about what he had said. I remembered that I had a flock depending on me. I remembered that I was Invincible Max and that the whitecoats making me run through their maze were a bunch of losers.
Which left the question: how to get out of here?
I still couldn't sit up, couldn't feel anything. I was spacing out and hallucinating again-it was way hard to concentrate, to remember what I was doing instead of floating off into la-la land.
Think, Max.
Then I remembered I had a Voice in my head. Voice, you got any ideas?
What is it they want from you? the Voice said, shocking me. It had never, ever responded to a direct question before. At least that I could remember, right then.
Uh... what did they want from me? Just for me to be here. To be able to do things to me, make me jump through their hoops, be their lab rat.
What would happen if you took that away from them?
I thought. They would be very upset?
I smiled. But how could I take that away from them? I'd pretty much established that I couldn't break out of this sardine can.
Think about it.
Now that I really thought about it, realizing how limited my options truly were kind of freaked me out. Here was a situation where all my speed, my physical strength, my cunning-none of it would do me any good.
It was mind-blowing.
If I hadn't been so totally spaced, I would have panicked.
As it was, I felt oddly removed from the problem. Freaked, but removed at the same time. I was losing myself. Losing my mind.
Losing myself... losing me. They would be upset if they lost me. Because I wouldn't be around to jump through their hoops. But since I couldn't physically move, getting lost seemed pretty unworkable.
Except.
There was another way for them to lose me: if I died.
Which would sort of defeat my own purpose, as well as theirs. But-could I just make them think I was dead?
I bet there were monitors of some sort in here. When you put a rat in a maze, you hung around to observe the results. They'd probably been recording my crazed ranting and sobbing all along.
Now. How to be dead?
I lay back in the buoyant liquid. It supported me totally-I didn't have to try to keep my head up or anything. My breathing slowed, in and out, one, two, three, four. I relaxed every single muscle. Then I just... went inside myself. It was like I was a machine and I was slowly flicking switches off. I just willed all my systems to slow down more and more.
In the yawning silence, my heart beat slower, then slower. My eyes closed. Everything was still and silent. Maybe I would lie in this watery tomb forever.
There was no time, no thought, no motion.
I hoped I wasn't actually dead.
That would make finding our parents and saving the world really hard.
129
I see no need to go into a lot of boring detail, but we found our way to the Itex computer room. So far, the plan was working beautifully.
I shooed everyone away to the darkest corner of the room, and they actually listened to me. Then I turned one computer on, and it booted up silently. I had been told Nudge was good with computers, so I motioned her over.
"See what you can find out about Itex," I whispered. "Be quick-I don't know how much time we have."
We had exactly six minutes, forty-seven seconds, according to my watch.
"Okay," Nudge whispered back. She slid onto the stool and instantly went to the "List Programs" menu. From there she got to a C prompt, and then she typed in a bunch of gibberish.
I sighed to myself, waiting for her to get stuck, and then I'd have to take over. They'd taught me everything I needed to make sure I could get us where we had to go.
"Oh, here," Nudge whispered, and I watched in surprise as page after page of information, all labeled "Restricted Access Only" filled the screen. Hmm. Maybe this mutant was smarter than she looked. Maybe somehow, something had come out right, with her.
"Okay, start reading," I said, looking over her shoulder.
Time was running out for the freaks.
130
I, Maximum Ride, was dead, and nobody seemed to have noticed.
Maybe I really was dead. I was starting to not really care one way or another.
Finally, finally my captors figured out that instead of an interesting, captive lab rat, they now had a much less interactive dead body on their hands.
Deep in my trance, I had only a split second to brace myself as they ripped open the top of the tank, letting in retina-searing, blinding light. Staying limp was the hardest thing I had ever done.
Voices said, "What happened? Who was monitoring her? They're gonna have our butts!"
Once again hands grabbed me and hauled me out of there. Once again it was the most horrible, painful thing I could imagine. But this time I forced my eyes open, put my feet down, and roared.
My knees buckled under me, but I flung my wings out, shaking as much moisture as possible off them. I had a brief glimpse of astonished, then angry faces, and, with another raspy, croaky roar, not nearly as intimidating as I'd hoped, I leaped up shakily.
I saw a blurred image of a window and ran at it, hardly able to keep on my rubbery legs. When I was close, I threw myself at the glass as hands grabbed at my wet clothes and wings.
Please don't let this glass have chicken wire embedded in it, I remembered to pray at the last second. I guess it didn't, because I crashed right through it, which made every cell in my body feel as if it had been crushed by a truck. Screaming in pain, I felt damp air hit my cheeks and then I started to fall.
I tried to move my wings, tried to remember that familiar feeling of catching wind beneath them: light, beautiful sails of muscle and feather and bone. But I felt only numbness, a deadened sensation, as if I'd been dipped in novocaine.
Work, dang it, work! I thought, and had an image of myself crumpling into a broken heap on the ground, maybe five stories below.
It was dark out: less painful for my eyes. I opened them to see the ground rushing up at me way too fast. Once again I flung my wings out, desperate for them to catch me, to snatch me back up into the air.
And they did-just as my bare feet banged against the grass. Then I was lurching unsteadily upward, trying to remember how to fly, how to move my muscles, how to unhinge my shoulder blades to give me more freedom. I lifted up past the broken window, which had several angry faces crowded in it.
One face wasn't angry. Jeb's. He held his hand out the window, giving me a thumbs-up.
"See you soon, sweetheart!" he called.
I soared upward, the wind blowing my wet hair back.
What was with him?
131
"Geez, there's so much stuff here," Gasman whispered, reading over Nudge's shoulder.
Yeah-huh, no kidding, I thought. I hadn't expected nearly this amount of info on Itex. I wondered if they'd had any idea that this kid would be so successful at hacking in.