"Well, before the crash, when I was trying to hold Jeb and then he let go?" Gazzy's face showed how painful the memory was. "Right as I knew I couldn't hold him much longer, he yelled one last thing, the last thing he wanted me to know before he died."

As much as I usually hated Jeb, I couldn't help admitting that I really did want to know what his almost-last words were. "And that was...?"

"He said, 'The human race will have to die to save the planet. Just like I have to die to save you.' " Gazzy looked up, his blue eyes troubled. "I think maybe Jeb is in on it. Your mom too."

41.

"WHA-HUH?" I SAID, already bristling. My mom? In on a heinous conspiracy?

"I know, I know," Gazzy said quickly. "You know how great I think Dr. M is. I don't want her to be in on this."

"Jeb, okay," I said, my temper flaring. "He's a lying, two-faced weasel. But my mom's good. She's always been good to us, and now you're just selling her out?"

"But... your mom trusts trusts Jeb," said Gazzy. "Even after you thought he had betrayed you and us and cut off all ties with him, your mom stayed in touch with him." Jeb," said Gazzy. "Even after you thought he had betrayed you and us and cut off all ties with him, your mom stayed in touch with him."

That had really ticked me off, but I figured she'd had her reasons. Like maybe she thought weasels were really cute. Or could be trained to do circus tricks.

"Something else," Dylan said, sounding reluctant. "Dr. Martinez is incredible. She's helped us all and even welcomed me into her home. But she also let Jeb bring Dr. Hans here without warning anyone, even after what you told her about him. Even after he almost killed Fang. She let him come here. Didn't that bother you at all?"

I spun around to look at him. "Oh, now everyone wants to jump on the traitor train to jerkville. You've been here for what? Two seconds?! This is my mom my mom we're talking about!" we're talking about!"

He put a hand on my shoulder, and I stiffened. I opened my mouth to continue defending my mom, who is, as I've pointed out, the only mom I'm ever likely to have. But despite my little outburst, a tiny seed of doubt had taken root in me. Dylan's instincts were usually pretty spot-on. And he always had my back, except for the whole leaving-Ella-behind-in-a-sea-of-cult-freaks thing.

I looked up and expected to find hurt or anger on his face, but he just looked sorry. And like he really cared about me. And then that rarest of rare things happened: I felt bad.

Then I looked at the concerned faces of my flock. So many times in the past, I'd ignored what they'd said and charged ahead, my mind made up about how it was going to be. But they weren't saying this stuff just to mess with me or to make me feel bad. I shut my mouth abruptly and sat down.

"Wasn't it your mom who convinced us all to go see the Gen 77 kids that morning?" Angel asked gently. "You didn't want to go, and we were all on your side. But your mom said she'd like to go, and that's why all of us got in Jeb's plane. Which is why we almost died."

I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach really hard. Everything in me wanted to tell them they were wrong, they were crazy. But the truth was that, as much as I loved my mom, and as much as I trusted her, I'd still known her for just a few years, and she was a grown-up. We didn't have such a great track record with adults in general or with scientists in particular. Even though it really, really hurt, I trusted the flock with my heart, with my gut.

I had to think this one through and not go charging off.

Maybe I really am getting older and perhaps a tiny bit wiser.

"But my mom and Jeb got on the plane too," I pointed out half heartedly.

Dylan said, "Maybe they figured that with all of us there, you and me and the rest of the flock, there was no way we'd let them die. If the accident was planned, and Hans somehow escaped out the front of the plane before it hit the ground, maybe they knew that we would come through for them somehow."

I tried taking some slow, deep breaths. I didn't, couldn't, believe that my mom would really put us on a plane she thought would crash. But they were right-something was sketchy. My stomach was in knots. My chest hurt.

"Maybe Jeb kidnapped my mom?" I suggested hopefully.

"She does love you, Max," Angel said, crossing over to me. "She absolutely does. I can feel it. But everyone involved with the Doomsday Group seems to put the situation above the people, you know? Like, the end of the world is bigger than who loves who or who wants to be with whomever. Maybe she-maybe they're all still convinced that they're acting for the greater good."

"Argh," I said, covering my eyes with my hands, the blank faces of the Doomsday zombies flashing before me. "There's nothing more dangerous than someone trying to act for the greater good." I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I looked at the floor, at my feet, anywhere but at the caring faces of my flock. I wanted to crawl into a little hole and not have to deal with any of this.

Then, with my next breath, I got angry again. This was my fault. This was what I got for trusting people, for letting them in. My mom was my weak spot, and I had been stupid! Naive! What had I been thinking?

I stood up, my face determined. "Maybe you guys are right. I hope we're all wrong. But until we know that, until I can really believe that, we need to close ranks right now, to protect ourselves."

"What do you mean, Max?" Nudge asked.

"I mean we should make a pact, today. A pact that from now on, no matter what, we will never again trust a grown-up."

Nudge's eyes got big, and even Dylan looked surprised.

I held out my fist. One by one, they each made fists and stacked them on top of mine. Then Total pushed a paw up under my hand. I tapped Iggy's hand twice, he tapped Gazzy's, and so on, until we had all agreed. And that was that.

This had been quite the year for heartbreak and disillusionment.

42.

"OKAY, NO GROWN-UPS," Gazzy said. "What now?"

"Ella," I said. "She's not a grown-up. If she's in on everything, we need to pump her for information. If she's innocent, we need to save her."

"Of course she's innocent!" Iggy said, and I remembered how he'd been cuddling up to her like a puppy dog these last couple weeks. I looked at him apologetically.

"Yeah but, I mean, just in case," I said, looking around, "we should ransack the place for clues. Spread out!"

We all scattered as if pawing through someone else's stuff was the most fun we'd had in weeks. But an hour later, we gathered in the kitchen, still no closer to an answer.

"I found this, though," Gazzy said excitedly, holding up a small green box. "Gas-X! Like, 'X' for explosion! This is great! I'm thinking I rig this with a detonator, and-"

"Did you find that in the medicine cabinet?" Dylan asked.

"Yeah."

"It's for upset stomachs," Dylan said, trying to hide a smile. He pointed to the words on the box. "It's to reduce gas in your digestive system, not to create more gas to make explosions."

Gazzy's face fell as Iggy said, "Really? Gazzy, take it! Take the whole box!"

"I second that emotion!" said Total.

"Okay," I said sharply. "Moving on. Did anyone else find anything?"

Iggy looked sheepish. "I found this," he said, holding up a cell phone. "It's Ella's. I felt bad going through her stuff, but if it'll help us find her..."

It took Nudge about a minute and a half to hack into the phone and bypa.s.s the security codes.

"She's slipping," Gazzy said, checking his watch.

"Am not!" Nudge said crossly. "It's overlaid with extra protection. It's weird. But I think I'm in. Hang on." She got a small cord and connected the phone to our laptop.

"Okay, now we'll all be able to see everything in the phone," she said, pointing to the computer screen.

A bunch of patchwork gibberish shot across the monitor, and I was reminded of that computer guy, the one we'd just seen in the desert. His computer had done stuff like this when we'd first met him in the subway tunnels.

"Slow it down," I said, as Nudge's fingers flew across the keyboard.

The images suddenly halted, and Nudge started scrolling through them.

"Well, look at that," said Dylan.

We saw photographs of the Gen 77 facility Dylan and I had gone to the day before. There were floor plans, all labeled, and photos of the interior and exterior of the building.

"What?" said Iggy. "What is it?"

"That weird facility Max and I checked out," Dylan said, pointing. "And there are those spider-eyed kids."

We also saw a couple of pictures of what looked like a cafeteria. I suppose even Gen 77 kids had to eat. I followed Dylan's finger to the images of our pals, the many-eyed fighters.

There were also text messages about meetings and a ton of background banners repeating the phrases "The Earth or Us" and "Kill the Humans." There was even a motivational video of some chick with a hypnotic voice and really beautiful eyes.

"Let's see what other pearls of propaganda the cult sent to Ella," I said.

Nudge expertly turned the innards of Ella's phone inside out, which revealed a bunch of scientific gibberish about unraveling DNA strands and inserting alternate DNA and RNA into the them. It sounded eerily familiar. Like we-were-injected-with-bird-DNA-and-raised-in-cages familiar. Angel raised an eyebrow at me, reading my thoughts, and I remembered her panicked message at Ella's school about humanicide.

I sat back and let out a long breath. "Well, I guess we've got a date with doom," I said melodramatically.

"What do you mean?" Dylan asked.

"Looks like Ella's definitely at the facility. If she's all cute and cuddly with the Doomsday Group, we have to go save her, even if she tries to eat our brains," I said. "We leave in five minutes."

43.

"WHOA! WHAT'S DOWN there?" Dylan pointed to a small flame on the ground, about a mile away. The six of us, plus Total, had set off from my mom's house and headed southeast when it was already getting dark, and now we were about five or six miles from the Gen 77 facility.

I peered closer, then remembered Dylan's vision was way better than mine. "You're asking me? me?" I said.

"Looks like a campfire." He squinted. "Bunch of people sitting around it."

"My guess is a h.e.l.lions' hootenanny," I said, and Dylan chuckled. "A what?"

He shook his head. Even in the dark, I could sense his rather, um, adorable adorable smirk. "Let's check it out," he said, and we started down, the others following. smirk. "Let's check it out," he said, and we started down, the others following.

Anyone looking up and paying attention would have seen us, seven dark silhouettes against the moon. But these people weren't paying attention to us. They were gathered around their campfire, singing songs and roasting marshmallows. We circled silently overhead, descending lower and lower, and I think we all spotted her at almost the same time.

"Ella!" Total shouted but shut up pretty quick when I elbowed him in his furry ribs. The culties seemed too lobotomized to notice.

My half sister was sitting there, holding a skewered marshmallow over the fire, singing along with the others. I didn't recognize the song. They'd put new words to something traditional, and it took several minutes for me to make out the refrain: "We'll all go out together when we go "We'll all go out together when we goYes, we'll all go out together when we goOh, how the world will dieIn great fire from the skyYes, we'll all go out together when we go."

"Call me old-fashioned," Total huffed, "but I'll take 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain' over that anytime."

"Yeah," said Nudge. "I mean, grim much?"

We climbed about a thousand feet so we could talk normally. "Ig, have I told you lately how happy I am to have you back from loony land?" I said. He smiled, but it was clear he was really shaken up about Ella. "Okay, flock. Suggestions?"

"A raid!" Gazzy said. "A blitz! I'll make a diversion, a little ways away, you guys swoop down, grab her-"

"They're pretty far away from the facility, but we don't want to do anything that might show up on surveillance," I interrupted him.

"Basic hand-to-hand combat?" Dylan suggested.

"That would work, but then we'd have a bunch of beaten-up kids with stories to tell," I pointed out.

"I have an idea," said Iggy.

44.

AND SO IT WAS that the Great White Spirit descended from the heavens and appeared to the lost pilgrims in the desert.

Iggy floated gently down through the smoke. With the firelight shining on him and smoke plumes wreathing around his head and wings, he did sort of look like a scruffy angel. You know, if G.o.d had a sense of humor about it.

Now, Iggy is nearly six feet tall and superskinny. He has really pale skin, reddish-blond hair, and practically colorless blue eyes (when he takes off his shades). Basically, he looks kind of freaky even without the fourteen-foot wings. So to see him coming down from the sky, out in the middle of nowhere, probably turned at least a couple of kids into budding evangelists.

The crowd scrambled to its feet and looked at Iggy as a beacon of hope. Which, considering the screwed-up mental place these kids were in, he was.

"Welcome back, Iggy. I was worried when your family kidnapped you," the kid who seemed to be leading this little seance said. I recognized him as Josh, the guy who'd given Dylan and me the flyers at Ella's school.

"They're b.u.t.theads," Iggy said, obviously having a little fun.

The rest of us were lurking in the shadows not far away. I made a face at Nudge, who clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.