Chapter One

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Part One:

The New Testing Facility

1

I flapped my wings and pulled up the sleeves of my brown leather jacket. My hair flew into my face in greasy tangles and I tugged it behind my ears. “We’re almost there.” I yelled over the roaring wind. Angel had gone, presumed dead. No-one really wanted to talk about it. It was most likely the Doomsday group, who wanted to kill all the humans to save the planet. Well, I had to save it. My responsibility, apparently, so it was none of their beeswax. They had no right to kill one of the flock. It had been tearing me apart- it had changed all of us, and not for the greater good. Nudge had put the brakes on her motormouth, which was abnormal. She hadn’t spoken much since the aerial show with Fang and Angel. I wasn’t one to cry, usually. This was not usual.

We swooped down to our house, cutting against the high velocity of wind, and landing softly before the front door on the patio. Fang and his replacement group had a hideout, and he didn’t tell any of us where; they disappeared shortly after a small funeral-type event, held for a minute outside the burning building. Fury, pain and confusion swirled around my head. I was to blame for Angel’s death. It was all my fault. I was mad at myself for not being that attentive; I should have been paying more attention. I stayed in the air a bit longer than everyone else, mourning, until I floated down silently, my lips pursed. My forehead was aching because I’d been frowning so much over the past few months. What the hell was happening to me? I suddenly felt so vulnerable. Not a good time to insert witty remarks. Sorry, comedians.

It took more than ten hours to get back to Arizona from France, with the occasional stop at a McBurger. We didn’t really have much money- that might explain it. Plus, we were seriously tired, which didn’t really help our plight. The occasional carpark provided a bit of a rest, but not much. I think the whole thing really hit Gazzy the worst. His only blood relative in the whole flock, even though I considered us all as a family, had passed. Or so we all thought, but thinking about it, it was the most likely scenario.

When we stepped inside, there was a yellow post-it note on the banister, informing us that Mom and Jeb were at a Doomsday convention in Germany. Oh great, not them too. Jeb had literally only just recovered from the plane crash, and had only managed a couple of footsteps from the hospital, and he’d turned to Doomsday? The company was still going after all those bombs in Paris? For those of you who are newbies to our story, I’m Max, short for Maximum Ride, probably around 15 years young. There used to be six of us in our flock, and we’d been rammed together after several experiments at a lab called The School. One without recess, which sucked. We’ve all been together, more or less, since we broke out, until Fang left a couple of months back, apparently for our own good. I’ll admit it, I cried. He was my best friend and a bit more for a while. We met up with him recently to stop the Doomsday group from killing the humans, and his replacement group tagged along. We also, within all that, got an upgrade to our flock. His name is Dylan, and his sole purpose, according to Jeb, is to be my perfect other half. I don’t really know what to think. He looks like a model, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and he has the same determination as me, instead of being laid back. Like Fang. I swallowed, then raided the cupboards, and started to cook dinner. How very un-Max.

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