Harden your heart.
Why, hello there, Voice, I thought snidely. It’s nice to see you, too. How’s tricks?
There’s no time for jokes, Maximum. Time has run out. The end is here, Max. Now.
I stopped slashing wing holes in the back of a hoodie and frowned. The end? Like the apocalypse? No offense, but if I had a nickel for every time I’d heard that—
This is no time to be getting soft, to let your guard down, Max. You’re not as paranoid as you used to be. You’re not as strong.
Hey, I am just as paranoid as I ever was, I thought defensively. Our life here just happens to be on the calm and peaceful side of the spectrum. For once.
Listen very closely, Max. Your task, at the end, is to harden your heart.
Harden my heart? Like, further? Isn’t that what everyone has always complained about with me? Now it’s a good thing?
Lives will be lost. More than you can imagine. In order to survive, you must harden yourself against their suffering. Lose the softness. Become the fearless leader again.
I scowled at the implication that I’d ever been less than a “fearless leader,” but I had to admit, I was rattled—as much by the Voice, whose word I’d always taken as gospel, saying that the end was finally here as by the Voice, who had told me I had to save the world in the first place, telling me to put myself first. My mind recoiled at the confusion, and at the Voice’s hardness.
Its certainty.
I waited for the Voice to say something else, but it was silent—apparently my brain was only mine again. As messed up as that sounds.
Dread gnawing at my insides, I pondered my task: to harden my heart. Come what may.
42
EVERYTHING IS ABOUT to change. Dylan paused the video game he was playing. He looked around, but no one was near him. Prepare yourselves. Was this his… Voice? He knew Max, and possibly the other members of the flock, had heard it before, but this was totally new to him.
Um… what do you want? he thought. For a second, he was almost excited. It was like he was one of them—even more like Max—now that he had a Voice, too.
But his excitement quickly went cold.
You have a task ahead of you, Dylan. One that only you can perform. One that you must perform. Do you understand?
This sounded familiar. Dylan fought a wave of nausea as he remembered Dr. Williams describing the other task he had to perform—bringing Fang in for a life of torture. Now this weird Voice in his head was demanding something else of him that he supposedly couldn’t refuse….
What is it? Dylan thought with dread.
The answer wasn’t anything he would have predicted.
You must fully win Max’s heart. The survival of the world depends on it.
Dylan groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “Like I haven’t been trying!” he said aloud, exasperated. Is that all? Sure you don’t have any dragons I can slay instead?
A nice, solid, physical goal. That was what he needed. He was pretty confident about his physical abilities—flying skills, fighting technique, speed, strength.
But Max’s heart… Max was an enigma wrapped in a puzzle wrapped in a cipher. Or something. He’d been trying to win her over ever since he’d joined the flock. Every once in a while, it felt like he was making headway. Dylan’s face flushed as he remembered the few mind-blowing kisses they’d shared.
But then she would back off again, and he would be left wondering what he’d done wrong, and if he would ever, ever get it right.
Now the Voice, the not-to-be-ignored Voice, was saying he had to somehow step up his game and actually win Max’s heart. For the sake of the entire world. Dylan felt panicky. It wasn’t like winning Max’s heart was taking one for the team. It was the only thing he’d ever wanted.
But until now, he’d never been afraid of what would happen if he failed.
43
GOING ON A dream date is not exactly “hardening your heart,” Max, I thought to myself uneasily, remembering the Voice’s creepy warning. If being closed off were an Olympic sport, I’d have more gold medals than I could carry. But this whole heart-hardening gig simply was not happening.