“First we will dismember you,” said a Flyboy. “We will post the pictures on your blog. To show what happens when you resist. Then we will make you recant everything you have said on your blog.”
Fang grinned, continuing to bob and weave up and down by fifteen-foot drops. “After you dismember me? Did you fail basic human biology?”
“We will torture you,” the Flyboys pressed on.
“I don’t think so,” said Fang, and mowed them down. God! The whole firing-a-weapon thing was amazing! It just worked so incredibly well! It was so efficient! What did Max have against guns, anyway?
“We will show the world how you take back everything you said.” A new, unmowed-down crop of Flyboys continued the same old song.
“Here’s a tip,” Fang advised them. “If you show me being tortured and then taking everything back, people might catch on. They might actually guess that I didn’t do it voluntarily.”
“We will torture you,” the Flyboys insisted.
“Okay, bored now,” Fang said, and pulled the trigger. Only to have nothing happen. Maybe the gun was empty. In an instant he’d swooped and tried to pluck another gun from a crumpled Flyboy body. That gun was attached to its Flyboy, though, so Fang ended up being yanked to the ground. He dropped it, ran a bit to get away from ground-based Flyboys, then finally found an unattached gun.
Spinning, he fired, catching all the Flyboys directly behind him. Then he changed angles and shot up into the sky, watching with satisfaction as several Flyboys started flying lopsidedly, smoke streaming off them.
“Hey!” shouted the Gasman from above. “Watch that thing!” Fang looked up to see the Gasman pointing to two holes in his jeans—Fang had shot right through his pants, but amazingly hadn’t hit him.
“My bad!” Fang yelled. The drawback with guns, besides the fact that you might hit members of your own flock, was that they didn’t take out hundreds of bad guys all at once. He needed something more massive. If Iggy or the Gasman had had any bombs, they would have used them by now. It was up to Fang.
He leaped into the chilly air again, shooting more carefully at Flyboys. When he was about five hundred feet up, he saw a broad expanse of gray with a rim of fire at its far edge.
The ocean. With the sun breaking at the horizon.
“It is your time to die,” droned a full squadron of Flyboys, following him.
“I am one of many!” Fang shouted, heading east, away from the hangar. “I am one of many! You have no idea!”
117
I was braced and ready to launch into my next move against Omega when I heard the Director’s voice boom, “Wait!”
I wasn’t about to start listening to her now, and I sprang forward, fingers stiff to shatter his trachea—
But the metal collar around my neck zapped me with a nerve-shattering dose of electricity, and I dropped to the ground like a chunk of cement.
A while back, I’d been hit with a bunch of skull-exploding headaches that had left me weak and nauseated; this was a lot like that. When my scrambled brain finally cleared and my synapses began firing again, I was on my back with my worried miniflock p
eering down at me.
I shot to my feet as fast as I could, a little off balance, to see Omega standing to one side, ramrod straight like a soldier, not looking at me.
I shot Nudge a questioning glance, and she shrugged.
“You have anticipated my commands,” said the Director, sounding unthrilled.
I didn’t start it, lady, I was going to say, but then I remembered that, technically, I had, so I kept my mouth shut.
“The first part of the battle will be a test of speed,” said the Director.
The crowd of lemmings parted in anticipation of a race.
“Begin where you are,” intoned the Director. “Run to the opposite castle wall and back, four times. May the better man win.”
I gritted my teeth. The Director was a sexist pig on top of all her other faults.
The wall was about six hundred yards away. There and back, four times.