The Last Flight (A Maximum Ride fanfiction)

TLF Chapter 18.

Max stood and held out her hand, "Come on, everyone's probably starving, let's go back."

He took her hand and let her pull him to his feet, not because he couldn't get up on his own, but because he needed the contact.

Max walked around the fire to where Angel had left her backpack and began rummaging in it for food.

Fang wiped at his eyes again, not particularly looking at anyone and unzipped his own backpack looking for something other than granola bars...

Jeb's computer ... Jeb had been reading HIS file.

"Max!" He wrenched out the computer opening it and waiting for it to resume its open programs. Maybe Jeb had left some clue, some priceless bit of information that would make everything so easy to understand.

The screen faded from black to blue and his file popped open. Max walked over handing out granola bars on her way.

He pointed and showed Max the file and she yanked it out of his hands "Is this the stuff from the computer in New York?" She sat heavily on the ground. "Jeb had this the whole time?" Her voice was barely above a whisper and she knew only Fang could hear her.

"I'd be willing to bet my file is not the only one he's got on that thing Max."

She clicked on another file and stared at it awe. It was a girl, an older photo of a girl with long curling light reddish-brown hair, brown eyes and black wings. She looked so frighteningly familiar. That darkly intense gaze in her near black eyes...

The first line of the file was in red, "Terminated," And then her eyes fell on the girl's name. "Kitty..."

Kitty ... Where had she seen that name before?

She clicked back onto Fang's file and noticed something different about his name. Something that hadn't been there on the files in New York;

Fang, Gen2

Max looked at the bottom of the screen and opened the last two programs staring in openmouthed shock as David's and Aaron's files sprang open before her.

Sandman, Gen2 ... Constantine, Gen2...Gen2...

She wished desperately that Jeb/Voice would clarify it all but she knew that would never again happen. Jeb was dead...

Kitty and I spent every waking second trying to find you-

And then it all hit her like a ton of bricks.

Max clapped a hand over her mouth and made an exquisite coughing gag sound in her throat.

Gen2 ... GENERATION 2.

The girl looked to be about her age a teenager, just like they'd said, just a teenager ... She stared at Kitty, in awe, horror and a kind of dumbstruck humor.

They'd always joked about this but she'd never- NEVER expected to actually face the facts of it.

"What? What is it?" Fang tried to take the computer from her. "Did you find my expiration date or something? Am I going to die!" His voice was strained.

Max shook her head, "You're not going to believe this, Fang. You're just not going to believe this."

"What?" His voice cracked and he put a hand to his throat suddenly aware of how high pitched that sound had been. Had Aaron damaged his voice-box trying to strangle him?

Max licked her lips. "I just found your mother."

His eyes went wide and his jaw worked up and down soundlessly. He snatched the computer away from her and stared at the picture for close to a full minute. It was the same young woman from the other picture he'd gotten from the lab in New York but this time he could see-

"She ... She has wings ... M-Max, she has wings!"

He swallowed and stared down at the picture in awe then looked at his brothers' files. "We were hatched..." It came out monotone, in barely a whisper.

His head snapped up and he stared at her in the pale light from the computer screen. "Oh, my God, M-Max I was hatched!"

He clambered to his feet and rushed forward.

"Guys! Guys, look at this!" He said his voice shrill, his feathers on end.

Gasman, Nudge and Angel gathered around him staring at the computer screen mouths open. Iggy clambered to his feet, "What, what is it? Hello, blind guy wanting to know what he heck is going on!"

Gasman turned, still pointing at the computer, "Fang's hatched!" His blue eyes were round as dinner plates.

Iggy's jaw dropped and his eyebrows shot up from behind the bandana tied about his head. "Fang's HATCHED!"

"My mom was one of us, Ig!" He said loudly, wishing Iggy's eyes worked so he could see how beautiful his mother was in all her teenaged, winged, NON-crackhead glory.

Aaron threw a sizable rock at Fang and it bounced off his thigh, "There's a photo of our mum in there?"

Fang nodded a wide, teary grin spreading across his face.

"Then what the hell are you doing standing there like the royal-sodding-guard! Bring it to me, I want to see her too!"

They'd all taken turns staring at the picture of Fang's mother and Aaron had even woken David up to see her. Then they'd all sat solemnly heads bowed, and mourned her.

"He didn't talk about mum much ... Not until that night ... The night he got your E-mail and realized the person we'd seen in the news papers was you. But he never mentioned this! He only said that he and mum were just kids. Sixteen years old and married with a babe on the way..."

Fang wiped at his eyes, at first pretending merely to rub dust from them then openly drying tears on his shirtsleeve.

"I've never met him, but Dad said we have an uncle living in Oklahoma ... Allan. Dad said that Allan helped him and Kitty shortly after they were married. I never understood why they would need help ... But it all makes sense now. I'm not sure if Allan is even still alive though ... Maybe we could look into it once we're ... Once we're wherever we're going."

Max nodded, "If he's still alive we'll find him."

The sun was coming up and the camper-bonfire had burned out, leaving smoking ashes and bits of melted metal behind.

Max rubbed her eyes and stretched looking out over the desert, her heart breaking. So much pain. So much death...

Jeb's body was out there somewhere. She could just picture it flattened like a pizza- She turned her head, pushing the thought from her mind almost as quickly as it came to her.

No ... She was not going to remember him like that she would not. She would remember him as she saw him ... Her father.

She wondered if someday she would tell this story to her own children. Would she tell them of the brave man who gave his life to save a couple of mutant bird-kids? Or would she even be alive to tell the story to anyone when it was all over. Would there be a world left to hear her?