Then she would get a sip of water and a five-minute rest while they redid the maze.
Angel sniffled, trying to keep quiet. She hated this! If only she knew beforehand—if only she knew, she could run through fast and not get shocked or burned.
Angel sat up, a tingle of excitement running down her spine. She closed her eyes and tried to listen to what the whitecoats were thinking.
One of them wanted to let an Eraser loose in the maze, have it fight with her, see how strong she really was. One of them thought they should increase the heated wires so she always had to run on them, whether she was slowing down or not. Then he could study the effect of stress on her adrenaline levels.
Angel wanted them all to burn in h-e-double toothpicks forever.
One of them was designing the next maze, the creep.
Angel concentrated, trying to look as though she was resting. Someone gave her another sip of water, and she sucked it down fast. She could see the rough plan of the maze! It was in her mind because it was in the whitecoat’s mind. Deliberately, Angel breathed in and out, looking spent, but she felt a new surge of possibility.
She got it. She knew what the next maze would look like. Blinking tiredly, Angel sat up, keeping her eyes unfocused. In her mind, she was reviewing the maze’s layout: a quick right, then another right, then a left, skip the next three rights and take the fourth one . . . and so on, till she saw the exit.
She could see all the traps, the dead ends, the paths that led nowhere.
She could hardly wait to blow their minds. This would be fun!
A whitecoat grabbed her, made her stand in front of the new maze’s entrance.
The bell clanged.
Someone pushed her.
Angel took off. Running as fast as she could in case all the wires were hot, she took a quick right, another right, then a left, and so on. She raced through with record speed, with no hesitation. She didn’t get shocked once and never felt a hot wire under her feet.
She burst out of the maze’s exit, then collapsed onto the cool wooden floor.
Time passed.
Words floated to her: Amazing. Cognitive ability. Interpretive skills. Creative problem solving. Dissect her brain. Preserve her organs. Extract her DNA.
A voice said, “No, no, we can’t dissect her brain just yet.” The speaker laughed, as if it were funny. His voice sounded . . . like she’d heard it in a fairy tale or something, like at night, or at home, or with Max. . . .
Angel blinked and swam toward consciousness. She made the mistake of looking up. An older man was there. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and was smiling at her. She got no thoughts from him whatsoever. He looked . . .
“Hello, Angel,” said Jeb Batchelder kindly. “I haven’t seen you in a long time. I missed you, kiddo.”
38
Nudge didn’t know exactly what Fang expected to see. Max, flying toward them? Max, standing on the ground below, waving her arms to get their attention? Max’s body, crumpled—Nudge shut that thought down. She would just wait. Fang was older and really smart; Max trusted him. Nudge trusted him too.
How far back had Max separated from them? Nudge couldn’t remember. She and Fang had been flying in ever-widening circles for hours. How did they know Max hadn’t passed them somehow and was waiting for them back at Lake Mead?
“Fang? Do you remember where we left Max?”
“Yes.”
“Are we going to go there?”
Pause. “Not if we can help it.”
“But why? Maybe Max is hurt and needs help. Maybe we need to save her before we go save Angel.” It was hard, keeping these missions separate. First Angel, now Max, then Angel again.
Fang banked to the left, tightening the angle as they’d seen the hawks do. Nudge followed him. Below them, the ground looked parched, with only occasional roads, cactuses, brush.
“I don’t think Max would have gotten hurt all by herself,” Fang said slowly. “She’s not going to fly into a tree or crash-land. So if she’s late because she’s hurt, it probably means that someone, a person, hurt her. Which means that someone knows about her. We don’t want that someone to know about us too. Which they would if we went to where Max is.”