“It looks so depressing,” said Nudge softly. “I would hate to work there.”
“You think?” I said. “I would hate to undergo cruel and unusual scientific experimentation there. It looks like the kind of forbidding, twisted place where evil scientists would do totally unthinkable, gruesome experiments. Like graft other species’ DNA into innocent infants.”
“For example,” said Nudge.
“What are we gonna do here?” Ari asked. The rest of us were so slender and lithe, thanks to our birdlike bones, that Ari seemed especially hulking and clunky in comparison. Now he loomed over us in the dark as we took our first look at the Itex British headquarters.
Fittingly, the building used to be a prison. And boy, had the Brits cornered the market on dank and gloomy. Itex headquarters had an unmistakable eau de prison about it—looming, blocklike rectangular buildings made of dirty brown brick.
If the leader of Itex is reading this right now, I have two words for you: seasonal plantings.
The entire thing was surrounded by an electrified chain-link fence at least twelve feet high, topped with razor wire, in case getting repeatedly shocked with five thousand volts wasn’t enough of a deterrent. And okay, if you’re totally nuts, maybe it wouldn’t be.
Of course, we were just going to fly over it anyway.
I heard Angel swallow in the quiet night and looked down at her. Her face was unusually pale, her eyes wide.
“What’s up?” I asked her, going on alert.
She swallowed again and reached for my hand. I squeezed hers and knelt down to her level.
“I can feel thoughts and stuff coming from inside,” she said brokenly. “From the whitecoats and also, like, minds without bodies.”
Brains on a Stick, I thought.
“They’re thinking awful stuff,” Angel went on. “They’re really bad. Like, evil. They want to do their plan and they don’t care what they have to do to make it happen. They don’t mind killing people. Or animals.”
Or any combination thereof, I thought.
“How about other bird kids?” I asked. “Other recombinant life-forms, Erasers?”
She shook her head, her curls shining in the moonlight. “They’re all dead. They killed them all.”
73
So of course we had to get in there! I mean, why would we pass up a chance to break into a place where delusional mass murderers were targeting creatures just like us? What would be the fun of avoiding that situation?
“Do we really have to go in there?” Nudge asked. “’Cause, I mean, if we don’t actually have to, then I’d rather not. I’d rather kick back somewhere.”
I smiled at her and tried to smooth her unruly brown hair. “You and me both, kid. But I have this whole saving-the-world gig, and I kind of have to do this. You with me?”
She nodded, not looking happy, then put a fierce expression on. “I’m ready. Let’s bust this place up!”
“Me too!” said Angel. “Those people are really evil. They shouldn’t be allowed to hurt anyone else. We have to fix it so they can’t.”
“We have to end this now, here!” Ari said.
“That’s right!” I said, holding my fist out to tap, like we did at bedtime. “We’re gonna rain fire on this place! When we’re done, there’ll just be a greasy spot!”
Remember the Hydra, Max?
I almost jumped. Would I ever get used to an uninvited Voice inside my head? My guess at this point was no.
Hydra, Hydra, I thought. Sounds like a...sprinkler?
No. The Lernaean Hydra, one of the labors of Heracles. Every time Heracles cut off a head, two grew back in its place.
Oh. That. Yeah, I saw a cartoon about it once. What about it?