I sighed to myself, waiting for her to get stuck, and then I’d have to take over. They’d taught me everything I needed to make sure I could get us where we had to go.
“Oh, here,” Nudge whispered, and I watched in surprise as page after page of information, all labeled “Restricted Access Only” filled the screen. Hmm. Maybe this mutant was smarter than she looked. Maybe somehow, something had come out right, with her.
“Okay, start reading,” I said, looking over her shoulder.
Time was running out for the freaks.
130
I, Maximum Ride, was dead, and nobody seemed to have noticed.
Maybe I really was dead. I was starting to not really care one way or another.
Finally, finally my captors figured out that instead of an interesting, captive lab rat, they now had a much less interactive dead body on their hands.
Deep in my trance, I had only a split second to brace myself as they ripped open the top of the tank, letting in retina-searing, blinding light. Staying limp was the hardest thing I had ever done.
Voices said, “What happened? Who was monitoring her? They’re gonna have our butts!”
Once again hands grabbed me and hauled me out of there. Once again it was the most horrible, painful thing I could imagi
ne. But this time I forced my eyes open, put my feet down, and roared.
My knees buckled under me, but I flung my wings out, shaking as much moisture as possible off them. I had a brief glimpse of astonished, then angry faces, and, with another raspy, croaky roar, not nearly as intimidating as I’d hoped, I leaped up shakily.
I saw a blurred image of a window and ran at it, hardly able to keep on my rubbery legs. When I was close, I threw myself at the glass as hands grabbed at my wet clothes and wings.
Please don’t let this glass have chicken wire embedded in it, I remembered to pray at the last second. I guess it didn’t, because I crashed right through it, which made every cell in my body feel as if it had been crushed by a truck. Screaming in pain, I felt damp air hit my cheeks and then I started to fall.
I tried to move my wings, tried to remember that familiar feeling of catching wind beneath them: light, beautiful sails of muscle and feather and bone. But I felt only numbness, a deadened sensation, as if I’d been dipped in novocaine.
Work, dang it, work! I thought, and had an image of myself crumpling into a broken heap on the ground, maybe five stories below.
It was dark out: less painful for my eyes. I opened them to see the ground rushing up at me way too fast. Once again I flung my wings out, desperate for them to catch me, to snatch me back up into the air.
And they did—just as my bare feet banged against the grass. Then I was lurching unsteadily upward, trying to remember how to fly, how to move my muscles, how to unhinge my shoulder blades to give me more freedom. I lifted up past the broken window, which had several angry faces crowded in it.
One face wasn’t angry. Jeb’s. He held his hand out the window, giving me a thumbs-up.
“See you soon, sweetheart!” he called.
I soared upward, the wind blowing my wet hair back.
What was with him?
131
“Geez, there’s so much stuff here,” Gasman whispered, reading over Nudge’s shoulder.
Yeah-huh, no kidding, I thought. I hadn’t expected nearly this amount of info on Itex. I wondered if they’d had any idea that this kid would be so successful at hacking in.
Nudge was scrolling through pages fast. I kept an eye on my watch, ready to hurry everyone on to part two of tonight’s little charade.
“I wonder,” Nudge said, suddenly stopping her typing and sitting very still. “I wonder if Jeb has been here. I feel something.” Cripes, I thought. This is getting creepy.
“Why would Jeb have been here?” I snapped. “He has nothing to do with Itex.”
“Max, I can feel his vibe. He was here. Maybe there is something on him, on us, in the Itex files.” Her fingers started flying.