21.

"I'M NOT SEEING anything," Dylan said a good twenty minutes later. "I mean, I see the wires. I see where we all hit the ground. The plane's sheared-off wings are over there, all in pieces. I can even see the plane's door that ripped off. But what I don't see is-"

"Hans. Or the plane's fuselage," I interrupted.

"You read my mind again!" said Dylan, and I glared at him.

"No, it's just the obvious huge missing thing. I have a brain. I can think."

"I know that," Dylan said mildly. "I was just teasing."

Now I felt like a clod. I rolled my shoulders to release some tension. "So where do you think it is?" I am highly skilled at changing the subject as demonstrated here.

"It was already smoking and spiraling by the time I got out," he said. "I didn't think it would get far at all."

"We should check under the cloud of balloon-type things," I said, and Dylan nodded as he started a wide, smooth, arcing turn.

"Show me how to fly sideways," he called over his shoulder. "That was cool."

"The hawks taught us that," I said. "Basically, you roll and point one wing down. Then keep flapping. You'll keep moving forward, even though it feels weird."

Dylan tried it. The first couple of times he looked a little clumsy, but when we reached the wires of death, he was flipping sideways like a pro, powerful and smooth. His learning curve was really amazing.

"Man, each tiny wire has four sides, like a four-sided razor," he said as we carefully started flying through the wires.

"You can see that?" I asked.

"Yeah. I can see really far, really close, and sometimes right through stuff." He turned back to grin at me, and I wondered what kind of things he could see right through.

"I guess you're the improved version of me," I said coolly. "I have great vision but not like that. I mean, I can see the school building way down there but not the four sides of the wires."

He smiled at me. "Everyone has strengths and weaknesses," he said with irritating modesty. So far, I had seen only strengths and no weaknesses from him. But I wasn't about to say that.

"I'm not seeing squat, other than the school," I reported. "And we already knew that was there. Let's broaden our search area."

"Good idea," said Dylan, and ten seconds later we were out of those awful wires and in the open blue sky.

I breathed deeply, enjoying the sun on my face. For several minutes we flew in silence, hearing just the sounds of our wings and the occasional bird. After a while of finding no Hans remnants, I said, "Let's check out the school anyway."

Dylan said the exact same thing at the exact same time. Again.

22.

"I THOUGHT THIS Doomsday stuff was, like, urgent," Star said. "Who's this girl we're waiting for?" Star was devouring another hot dog from room service, her third, while Kate looked on, repulsed.

"And how come all we're getting is chicks?" Ratchet asked Fang. "Not that I'm complaining." He lifted his sungla.s.ses to peer at Kate.

"n.o.body says 'chick' anymore." Kate rolled her eyes.

Ratchet grinned at her, his bright smile lighting his face. "Okay, I hear you." He turned back to Fang. "How come all we're getting is babes?"

"She's just someone I know from a while ago," Fang said in a controlled voice from behind his computer. "And there's another guy on the way too, Ratchet. He's the last one. They both should be here soon. For now, I guess we just chill."

Not five minutes later, Star's angry voice made Fang look up. She was standing over Ratchet, who was sprawled across one of the double beds. "I was watching that! You can't just change the channel!"

"There's a game on," Ratchet said. "You watch your little show in the other room."

"The TV's broken in there," Star snapped. "How can you even see it with those stupid sungla.s.ses on or hear it through those headphones, anyway? Give me the remote."

Ratchet shrugged, looking bored, and turned the volume down even lower.

"Listen, street punk," Star snarled, her angry face close to his. "You're a guy, and you're a couple inches taller, and maybe forty pounds heavier, and ooh, you're in a gang. But I've survived ten years of Catholic school, and I will cut you off at the knees without a blink. Do you understand?" She s.n.a.t.c.hed the remote from his hand and in a millisecond was halfway down the hall.

"Your daddy pay for that att.i.tude?" Ratchet called after her.

Everything happened fast after that. Before Fang could even ask what was going on, Star had zipped back into the room like a bullet, but Ratchet's hypersenses had tipped him off, and he was ready for her. But before either of them could make contact, Kate had both of Star's hands clamped in one of hers and her left knee firmly on Ratchet's chest, pinning him hard to the floor.

"I said I don't like violence," she said quietly. "Maybe you two should cool off."

Ratchet grinned up at her goofily. "Kate the Great." He wheezed. "I think I'm in love."

"Guys, guys," Fang said, raising his voice until they all looked at him. "Kate's right. Maybe you should check your egos. We're all really different. Don't you realize that that's exactly why I picked you, out of everyone who applied on the blog? For example, what might defeat Ratchet might not defeat Star."

Star smirked, and Fang cleared his throat. He hated talking so much-he'd never known that all the talking Max did was necessary, as a leader. He'd been realizing a lot of things about Max lately.

"That means that it'll be tough for us to work together as a group, but you need to suck it up, try to get along, and treat each other with respect. If you don't feel like you can do that, then leave now, no hard feelings." Fang felt their surprise. He looked into each of their faces, but no one stepped forward.

"Fang's gang," Ratchet said from the floor. "Got it, bro." The girls nodded in agreement.

"Okay, then. I guess we're all straight on that," Fang said.

"Straight on what?" Max said from behind him.

Fang's heart almost stopped.

23.

FANG SPUN AROUND and saw Max standing there, giving him the sardonic smile he knew so well.

"Straight on the fact that we need to work together as a team," Fang managed to say. His heart contracted painfully inside his chest, then started beating again. "Where'd you come from?"

Max smirked and pointed at the sky, then wriggled a bit, adjusting her wings under her oversized windbreaker. "This was where we were supposed to meet, right?" She scanned the rest of Fang's gang.

"Yeah," Fang said, taking a deep breath. G.o.d help him, she even smelled familiar. "It's been a long time."

"Has it?" Max c.o.c.ked her head and looked him up and down. "It feels like we just saw each other."

Fang sighed. Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea. He'd underestimated how he'd react to her. Way underestimated.

Max flipped her light brown hair over one shoulder, and Fang noticed that she'd dyed a big magenta streak in part of it. Other than that, she looked exactly the same.

Exactly the same as the Max he'd left barely more than a week ago, back in Colorado. He wondered what she was doing now, what she'd think about his joining forces with... her. The other her, that is. Max the Clone. Max II.

"Hi, I'm Kate," Kate said, extending her hand.

Max II looked at the hand, then shook it, a smile lifting one side of her mouth. Max's mouth. The mouth Fang had kissed so many times. Blood was rushing through his head, and he needed to clear it, to take control of this situation again. Worse, he had the feeling that this Max knew exactly what he was thinking, could read his mind, and was somehow laughing at him.

"And this is Star," Kate said, pointing. "And that's... Ratchet."

"Yo." Ratchet had gotten up off the floor, but his hands were buried in the pockets of his hoodie. "Cool hair. Is it dyed in blood or something? 'Cause that would be hard-core."

Max II snickered, unphased by his comment.

"And what's your name?" Star asked politely, but in the twenty-four hours Fang had known her, he'd learned to recognize the tone of warning beneath her politeness.

"Her name is-" Fang began, but Max II interrupted him.

"Maya. They call me Maya." She shoved her hands into her pockets and sat down on one of the beds, daring him to contradict her.

Fang blinked. So she had changed her name. He couldn't blame her.

"You okay, dude?" Rachet elbowed Fang in the ribs. "You're looking a little green around the gills."

Fang nodded his head, avoiding Maya's eyes. "I'm fine. We just-go back a long time."

Ratchet eyed the tips of Maya's wings sticking out of her coat and gave a low whistle. "Say no more, man. I get you. You guys were all Swan Lake, doing the lovebird dance, and now it's a little Emotions on Ice." He looked at Kate. "I go for the Wonder Woman type myself."

Kate's smooth Asian face flushed bright red, and Star looked disgusted. "Maybe he could use another knee to the jugular," she suggested.

Maya laughed. "Fun little group you got here."

Fang forced a smile and nodded. This had been a huge mistake.

BOOK TWO.

WHAT'S SO FUNNY 'BOUT PEACE, LOVE, AND WORLD DESTRUCTION?

24.

"DO YOU SEE any guards?" I asked Dylan. Of course, I was still quietly freaking out about the second "coincidence," but he didn't need to know that...

"Not yet," he said. "But they must be there. Are we thinking drop down onto the roof? Or land in the desert, then sneak up?"

"Roof," I said, and he nodded. I hated it when he was agreeable.

Naturally, they weren't going to let us just drop down onto the roof. My life could never be that easy. After all, this was a top-secret facility where new life-forms were being created. You think they'd let strangers plunk right down onto the roof?

No.

As soon as we were within three hundred feet, a door on the roof swung open, and figures all in black complete with ninja hoods, leaped out. They popped rifles up on their shoulders and took aim.

"Evasive maneuvers!" I yelled, but Dylan was already matching me zig for zag as we poured on the speed, blazing into the sky.

A bullet whistled past my ear. They were using long-distance sniper's rifles.

"Watch it, Max!" Dylan grabbed my hand and yanked me to the left, just as another bullet streaked by, right where my head had been. I gaped at him, and he dropped my hand sheepishly. He shrugged. "I saw the guy aim."

The people on the roof were little stick figures by now. Another hundred feet up and they'd disappear from my view.

"Freaking whitecoats!" I screamed, even though they'd been dressed in black. "So, what? You think if you can create life, you can destroy it too?"

Dylan looked down again, squinting. "Wait. They're not whitecoats," he said. "They're not even grown-ups. They're... I think they're kids."

"Oh, come on," I protested. "They might have been a little short, but-"

"I could see them," Dylan insisted, sounding agitated. "Inside their masks. They were kids, Max. I'm positive. And it gets worse. They didn't, they didn't have-eyes."

"What?" I gasped. We'd reached a good cruising alt.i.tude, well out of range of fire. From this height, the land below looked like a crazy quilt st.i.tched together.

"They didn't have eyes," he repeated, genuinely troubled.

"Great, give the blind kids guns," I said, trying to lessen his horror. "I don't even let Iggy have a gun. Usually." I glanced over at Dylan, but he wasn't smiling.