Prologue
CATCHING BIRD FREAKS: HAZARDOUS DUTY AT BEST
1
Windsor State Forest, Massachusetts
Ssssss.
The soldiers’ armor made an odd hissing noise. But besides the slight sound of metal plates sliding smoothly, flawlessly over one another, the troop was unnaturally quiet as it moved through the woods, getting closer to the prey.
The faintest of beeps caused the team leader to glance down at his wrist screen. Large red letters scrolled across it: ATTACK IN 12 SECONDS . . . 11 . . . 10 . . .
The team leader tapped a button, and the screen’s image changed: a tall, thin girl with dirt smears on her face and a tangle of brown hair, glaring out at him. TARGET 1 was superimposed on her face.
. . . 9 . . . 8 . . .
His wrist screen beeped again, and the image changed to that of a dark-haired, dark-eyed, scowling boy. TARGET 2.
And so on, the image changing every half second, ending finally with a portrait of a small, scruffy black dog looking at the camera in surprise.
The team leader didn’t understand why Target 7 was an animal. He didn’t need to understand. All he needed to know was that these targets were slated for capture.
. . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .
The leader emitted a whistle pitched so high that only his team members could hear it. He motioned toward the small run-down cabin they had surrounded in the woods.
Synchronized perfectly, as only machines can be, the eight team members shouldered eight portable rocket launchers and aimed them straight at the cabin. With a whoosh, eight large nets made of woven Kevlar strands shot out from the cannons and unfolded with geometric precision in midair, encasing the cabin almost entirely.
The team leader smiled in triumph.
2
“THE PREY HAVE BEEN CAPTURED, SIR,” the team leader said in a monotone. Pride was not tolerated in this organization.
“Why do you say that?” the Uber-Director asked in a silky tone.
“The cabin has been secured.”
“No. Not quite,” said the Uber-Director, who was little more than a human head attached by means of an artificial spinal column to a series of Plexiglas boxes. The bioengine that controlled the airflow over his vocal cords allowed him to sigh, and he did. “The chimney. The skylight.”
The team leader frowned. “The chimney would be impossible to climb,” he said, accessing his internal encyclopedia. Photographs of the prey scrolled quickly across the team leader’s screen. Suddenly an important detail caught his attention, and he froze.
In the corner of one of the photographs, a large feathered wing was visible. The team leader tracked it, zooming in on just that section of the image. The wing appeared to be attached to the prey.
The prey could fly.
He had left routes of escape open.
He had failed!
The Uber-Director closed his eyes, sending a thought signal to the nanoprocessors implanted in his brain. He opened his eyes in time to see the team leader and his troop vaporize with a crackling, sparking fizzle. All that was left of them was a nose-wrinkling odor of charred flesh and machine oil.
Part One
ANOTHER PART OF THE BIG PICTURE
3
A DIFFERENT FOREST. Not telling you where.
Okay, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that funerals suck. Even if you didn’t know the person, it’s still totally sad. When you did know the person, well, let’s just say it’s much worse than broken ribs. And when you just found out that the person was
your biological half brother, right before he died, it adds a whole new level of pain.
Ari. My half brother. We shared the same “father,” Jeb Batchelder, and you can believe those quotes around “father.”
I’d first known Ari as a cute little kid who used to follow me around the School, the horrible prison–science facility where I grew up. Then we’d escaped from the School, with Jeb’s help, and to tell you the truth, I hadn’t given Ari another thought.
Then he’d turned up Eraserfied, a grotesque half human, half wolf, his seven-year-old emotions all askew inside his chemically enhanced, genetically modified brain. He’d been turned into a monster, and they’d sent him after us, with various unpredictable, gruesome results.
Then there had been that fight in the subway tunnels beneath Manhattan. I’d whacked Ari’s head a certain way, his neck had cracked against the platform’s edge . . . and suddenly he’d been dead. For a while, anyway.
Back when I thought I had killed him, all sorts of sticky emotions gummed up my brain. Guilt, shock, regret . . . but also relief. When he was alive, he kept trying to kill us — the flock, I mean. Me and my merry band of mutant bird kids. So if he was dead, that was one less enemy gunning for my family.
All the same, I felt horrible that I had killed someone, even by accident. I’m just tenderhearted that way, I guess. It’s hard enough being a homeless fourteen-year-old with, yeah, wings, without having a bunch of damp emotions floating all over the place.
Now Ari was dead for real. I hadn’t killed him this time, though.
“I need a tissue.” Total, our dog, sniffled, nuzzling around my ankles like I had one in my sneakers.
Speaking of damp emotions.
Nudge pressed closer to me and took my hand. Her other hand was over her mouth. Her big brown eyes were full of tears.
None of us are big criers, not even six-year-old Angel, or the Gasman, who’s still only eight. Nudge is eleven, and Iggy, Fang, and I are fourteen. Technically, we’re all still children.