“LET ME GO! I command you!” I heard Dr. Gunther-Hagen shout. “Have you lost your mind? Have you forgotten who I am?” I looked around and saw Dylan, flecked with blood and sporting a black eye, grasping the doctor from behind. He was staring at the doctor with fury, even hatred.
“I think you’ve forgotten who I am,” Dylan countered. “That is, not a robot. Someone with a mind of his own.”
“But you — you owe me your life!” Dr. G-H stammered.
“I’m not sure I want this life,” Dylan said sadly. And he looked at me and Fang.
The doctor’s eyes got even wider as he became fully aware of Fang’s regained consciousness. “This doesn’t make sense!”
“You don’t make sense!” I bit out through my tears. “We’re not just test subjects! We’re not just for experimenting! You people never learn!”
“I see it all clearly now,” Dylan said in an oddly flat, quiet voice. “I see what you are. I see what you made me. And I see what I’ll become.” He looked over at another gurney a few yards away from him. “Iggy, can you help me with this? Grab his legs.”
Iggy and Dylan lifted the struggling doctor onto the gurney. “Gazzy, Nudge, Angel, you too. We need help strapping him down.”
I was dumbfounded as I watched my flock restrain this evil genius on a gurney. As had been done to us so many times in our lives.
But the next thing surprised me even more.
Dylan picked up another fully loaded giant hypo from the tray next to Fang’s bed. “This should do nicely.” He readied the needle like a trained nurse. It was obvious that he’d been raised on injections.
Dr. Gunther-Hagen craned his head to look around at his lab, now destroyed; his guards, now useless; his subject Fang, now saved. And his master creation, Dylan, who looked as though he wanted to kill him.
“That’s what I call giving someone a taste of their own medicine,” Gazzy whispered.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Dylan,” the doctor said.
“Let’s pin his arm down, please,” Dylan directed quietly, and placed the tip of the needle on the vein. He was like a beautiful, powerful avenging angel.
And yet — he was … scary.
Nudge bit her lip. Angel looked confused. Iggy didn’t look anything.
I suddenly had a flash of myself saying something — it seemed like years ago. Someday we might have only a few seconds to figure out the meaning of life.
“Oh, God, Dylan — don’t,” I found myself pleading. “It’s just — enough. Enough already.”
Dylan stopped. Just like that. “Okay, Max.”
He looked at me, then at Fang, then at the doctor.
Then he plunged the needle into his own arm.
EPILOGUE
AFTER EVERYTHING, we’ve come to this, I thought.
I felt weird in my fancy dress, but even I had to admit it was gorgeous. Someone had come to the house this morning and fixed all of our hair — Angel’s golden halo of curls had never looked so perfect. Or so clean. Nudge looked even more like a teen model than usual, with her long, honey-streaked brown ringlets falling in perfect array around her shoulders. They were wearing matching dresses of russet silk. I glanced down at my cream-colored one, praying that I didn’t get dirt or blood on it before this was all over.
We carried flowers, bouquets of wildflowers that we’d picked this morning among the beautiful Colorado hills.
Nudge came up and stood next to me in the tent, peeking out through the door slit. It was a stunning afternoon, and in front of us, under a natural arch of trees, was a long red carpet with white chairs arranged on either side. Nudge smiled up at me.
“You’ve never looked more beautiful,” she said, and I gave a nervous grin. My hair was pulled back away from my face, and I had a little crown of flowers woven into it. I too was exceedingly clean.
Our various bruises and scrapes had healed completely, and Fang’s injuries were only a bad memory — as was Dylan’s pseudo suicide attempt. He’d suffered no ill consequences of the injection thus far. Plus, we hadn’t seen Dr. Gunther-Hagen again. We’d rolled him kicking and screaming into a giant lab cold-storage room before splitting that day, but I was sure one of his posse would revive and let the doc out of his icebox before he turned into a Popsicle.
“Is that the justice of the peace?” Nudge whispered.