I nudged his leg with my sneaker. “It’s better than that. This is cool.”
Fang gave me an “if you say so” look, and turned his bacon over the fire.
I stretched out with my head against my balled-up sweatshirt. Time to relax. I had no idea what that pain had been, but I was fine now, so I wasn’t going to worry about it.
What a lie. My knees were practically knocking together. The thing is, the “scientists” back at the School had been playing with risky stuff, combining human and nonhuman DNA. Basically, the spliced genes started to unravel after a while, and the organisms tended to, well, self-destruct. The flock and I had seen it happen a million times: The rabbit-dog combo had been such bad news. Same with the sheep-macaque monkey splice. The mouse-cat experiment had produced a huge, hostile mouse with great balance and an inability to digest either grain or meat. So it starved to death.
Even the Erasers, as successful as they were, had a huge downside: life span. They went from embryo to infant in five weeks, and from infant to young adult in about four years. They fell apart and died at around six years, give or take. But they were being improved all the time.
How about us? How long would we last? Well, as far as I knew, we were the oldest recombinant beings the School had ever produced.
And we could devolve and expire at any time.
And maybe it had started happening to me today.
“Max, wake up,” said Angel, tapping my knee.
“I’m awake.” I pulled myself up, and Angel crawled over and climbed into my lap. I put my arms around her and stroked her tangled blond curls away from her face. “What’s up, Angel?”
Her large blue eyes looked solemnly into mine. “I’ve got a secret. From when I was at the School. It’s about us. Where we came from?”
70
“What do you mean, sweetie?” I asked softly. What fresh hell is this?
Angel twisted the hem of her shirt in her fingers, not looking at me. I clamped down on any thoughts I had, so Angel couldn’t pick up on my alarm.
“I heard stuff,” she said, almost whispering.
I gathered her closer. When the Erasers had taken her, it felt like someone had chopped my arm off. Getting her back had made me whole again.
“Stuff people said or stuff people thought?” I asked.
“Stuff people thought,” she said. I noticed how tired she looked. Maybe this should wait till tomorrow.
“No, I want to tell you now,” she said, obviously reading my thoughts. “I mean, it’s just stuff I sort of heard. I didn’t understand all of it—chunks were missing. And it was from a couple different people.”
“From Jeb?” I asked, my throat tight.
Angel’s eyes met mine. “No. I didn’t get anything from him at all. Nothing. It was like he was dead.”
Angel went on. “They kept doing tests, you know, and they were all thinking about me, about the flock, like, wondering where you were and if you would try to come get me.”
“Which we did,” I said proudly.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Anyway, I found out that another place has information about us—like where we came from.”
My brain snapped awake. “Whaat?” I said. “Like our life span? Or where they got our DNA?” Did I even want to know our life span? I wasn’t sure.
Angel nodded.
“Well, spill it!” Iggy, who must have been awake and listening to us, demanded in that sensitive way of his. I shot him a look—which was useless, of course. And now everyone was awake.
“They have files on us,” Angel said. “Like, the main files. They’re in New York. At a place called the Institute.”
“The Institute?” I asked. “In New York City or upstate New York?”
“I don’t know,” Angel said. “I think it was called the Institute. The Living Institute or something.”