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“Is he your boyfriend?” Ella had been incredibly happy to see me. We’d hugged for a long time, until I heard Fang sigh impatiently. Now we were in her room, where she was changing out of her soccer uniform into regular clothes, while Fang made lame, stilted conversation with Dr. Martinez in the living room.
Regular people’s backs look so naked and...flat without wings. Just an observation.
/> “Fang? No! No, no,” I said quickly. “No. I mean, we grew up together, so we’re more like...uh, siblings.”
“He’s adorable,” she said matter-of-factly, pulling on some jeans and a hoodie.
I was still processing this and my reaction to it when she looked over at me and smiled. “But not as cute as Shaw Akers, in my class.”
I grinned back. Ella flopped next to me on the bed, and it was so normal, so like sisters or best friends or something, that my throat got tight.
“Shaw is seriously, amazingly adorable,” Ella went on, her face softening. “He asked me to the Christmas dance, but someone else had already asked me, so I have to go with the first one. But there’s always Spring Fling....” She wiggled her eyebrows, and I laughed.
“Good luck with that.” I had no Spring Fling in my date book. Mostly I had “kick Eraser butt,” “destroy evil School,” “save world,” stuff like that.
A gentle tap on the door made us look up.
“Ready?” Ella’s mom asked, opening the door.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.
29
Dr. Martinez drove us to her clinic. It was after hours, so she said we wouldn’t be disturbed. She parked in the back, sort of behind the Dumpster, so her car wouldn’t be noticed right away.
Inside the building, she didn’t turn on the lights, and she locked the door behind us.
“We don’t board animals, so there’s no one on night duty here,” she explained, leading us to the OR.
The operating table was meant for animals up to the size of, say, a large Saint Bernard, and my legs dangled off it. The metal was cold under my back, and the lights were way too bright. I closed my eyes.
Max, I forbid you to take out the chip. The Voice sounded uncharacteristically stern.
Yeah, forbid me, I thought tiredly. That’s always worked so well for everyone else.
“First, I’m going to give you some Valium, just to help you relax,” said Dr. Martinez, starting an IV in my nonchip arm. “I’m also going to take a chest X-ray and do some blood work, just to make sure you’re not sick or anything.”
Because of my less-than-socially-accepted bizarro childhood at the hands of evil scientists, I have an overwhelming reaction to science lab–type smells, like alcohol, plastic tubing, floor cleaner, etc. When Dr. Martinez put the IV in, I had to grip the sides of the table to keep myself from leaping up and racing out of there, preferably punching a couple people first.
My heart was pounding, my breath coming shallower, and I could feel the white lightning of adrenaline starting to seep into my veins.
You know what? Turns out Valium just shuts that stuff right down!
“This is great,” I said with cheerful grogginess. “I feel so...calm.”
“You’re okay, Max,” said Ella, patting my shoulder.
“You still want to do this?” Fang asked. “Bark once for yes.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. With any luck at all, whatever grotesque thing would probably replace the Erasers wouldn’t be able to track us once the chip was out. And maybe the Voice would be gone forever too. I wasn’t positive the chip was connected to the Voice, but it seemed likely. Even though the Voice had been kind of helpful sometimes, I still wanted everyone out of my head except me.
Which is such a pathetic sentence, one that probably not a lot of people need to say.
Then Dr. Martinez stretched out my chipped arm and fastened it to the table.
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