Dylan leaned against the table and frowned at the teacher. “What do you want?” he said in a hostile voice he hoped sounded as tough as Max’s. He fingered a scalpel that one of the other kids had left behind, but it didn’t make him feel any more secure.
Dr. Williams smiled, making wrinkles appear around his mouth. “I’m not your enemy, Dylan. I have vital information for you, straight from Dr. Gunther-Hagen himself.”
“That’s impossible,” Dylan said, his muscles tensing even more at the mention of the brilliant, diabolical man who had engineered his creation. The man who’d given him his life, and introduced him to Max. “Dr. Gunther-Hagen is dead.”
“Oh, no, he’s very much alive,” promised Dr. Williams. “I’ve seen him myself.”
Dylan stared at Dr. Williams but didn’t respond. He had seen how Max looked at the biology teacher—with suspicion, distrust, and revulsion—and he didn’t trust this man for an instant.
“And Dr. Gunther-Hagen has a special project for you,” Dr. Williams continued. “A… mission, if you will.”
“What sort of mission?” Dylan asked doubtfully.
“A mission it is vital you keep secret from Max if you value her safety.” Dylan opened his mouth to protest, but Dr. Williams quickly cut him off. “It involves Fang.”
Dylan shifted uncomfortably at the sound of the unwelcome name, feeling more and more boxed in among the stacks of laminated papers, bins of educational videos, dissection tools, and models of the various stages of mitosis.
“Fang is a far bigger threat than you realize—a bigger threat than any of us realized.” Dr. Williams moved closer, seeming to delight in Dylan’s discomfort. He watched him gravely. “I’m sharing this information with you because we know you are good, Dylan, that you can be trusted. We can trust you, can’t we, Dylan?”
Dylan frowned. He did not like the turn this conversation was taking. Not at all. But at the mention of a secret, especially one about Fang, Dylan couldn’t help leaning closer. His breath quickened.
“Fang’s DNA, as it turns out, is different…. Dangerous. Dangerous in a way that bad people might use for their own selfish means. You wouldn’t want to help the bad people, would you, Dylan?”
Dylan crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t expect me to buy this without an explanation.”
As if to emphasize the delicacy of the information, in a hushed voice Dr. Williams described tests, experiments, and discoveries that boggled the mind. Dylan had certainly seen, felt, and heard about a lot of strange twists and turns of science in his few short years on the planet—not the least of which was being genetically enhanced to be able to heal wounds with his own saliva—but his mind was whirring a mile a minute at this strange, fascinating information he was learning about Fang’s DNA. It could be the key to the most important medical discovery in human history….
But he wasn’t even sure he believed it. And he definitely resented Dr. Williams’s condescending tone.
“So you see, Dylan, it’s very important that we contain the threat. That’s where you come in. We need you to capture Fang, to bring him to us. You’re stronger than Fang, Dylan,” the doctor said, touching his arm. It was a compliment, but Dylan flinched. “Superior,” the teacher continued. “You were designed for this. And you’d be doing a great service to the world, of course,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
Dylan’s eyes drifted to one of the chickens, still splayed open on the dissection table, its wings pinned open. They wanted to run more tests. On Fang. Dylan thought back to what Max had said about tests in her early life—about dog kennels and needles and whitecoats and drugs. He shook his head. Regardless of his history with Max’s ex, and regardless of any threat Fang’s DNA might pose, Dylan didn’t hate him that much.
“No,” Dylan said, already heading out of this room that was full of lies and bribes and the smell of formaldehyde. He didn’t need to hear any more. “Find someone else to be your headhunter. You can tell Gunther-Hagen to stick his mission up his—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Dr. Williams interrupted before Dylan had reached the door. “One more little tidbit, Dylan,” Dr. Williams called after him, holding up one finger. “If you don’t accept this mission, well, we’ll have to kill Max.”
22
ANGEL’S EYES FLEW open and she gasped for air, scrabbling at the sides of her cage in terror. She took a slow, deep breath.
It was just a dream.
Angel slumped against the plastic wall of the dog crate, feeling icky and shaky and sore all over. In the time she’d been held captive, she had been electrif
ied, operated on, beaten, scorched, and worked to exhaustion. But this nightmare was worse than any of it.
It hadn’t been real… had it?
Every time she closed her eyes, images from the dream plastered the inside of her brain: Max, her neck covered in blood, dropping like a rock out of the sky… her brown eyes dulling with death as her skin grew pale… But Max wasn’t dead, of course. Dead Max was the biggest oxymoron in history. Right?
Angel felt a rising panic. Her dreams, her visions, were almost never wrong. Except when she thought Fang would die. That hadn’t happened… yet.
She bit her lip, staring at the roof of her cage through half-lidded eyes, trying to make a connection. And then, like an image appearing through the fog, Fang materialized.
Joy, pure and powerful, surged inside her—until Angel realized that Fang wasn’t there. She was seeing him in another dreamlike vision. He was standing in a sea of red dust and blue sky, covered in blood and dirt and grime, but he didn’t look like Fang, exactly. He looked ferocious and crazed, a mad dog about to attack. Unhinged.
“She’s dead,” Fang said, and Angel drew in a sharp breath, her whole body trembling. She hadn’t dared to think it could really be true.