Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

8

We all have great vision -- raptor vision. So we have the excruciating pain of watching the helicopter take Angel away for much longer than the average person. My throat closed with a sob. Angel, whom I cared for since she was a baby with goofy chicken wings. I felt like they had chopped my own right wing off, leaving a ragged, gaping wound.

"They have my sister!" the Gasman howled, throwing himself down. He always tried so hard to be a tough guy, but he was only eight, and he'd just seen his sister kidnapped by the hounds of hell. He pounded the dirt with his fists, and Fang knelt next to him, one arm tenderly around his shoulder.

"Max, what are you gonna do?" Nudge's eyes were swimming with tears. She was bruised and bloody, her fists clenching and unclenching anxiously. "They have Angel. "

Suddenly I knew I was going to implode. Without a word, I pushed off from the ground, wings out, taking off as fast as I could.

I flew out of sight, out of the others' hearing. Ahead was a huge Douglas fir, and I landed ungracefully on one of its upper branches, maybe 175 feet in the air, scrabbling to catch hold because I'd overshot. Gasping, I clung to the limb.

Okay, Max, think. Think! Fix this! Figure something out!

My brain was flooded with two much thought, emotion, confusion, rage, pain. I needed to get a grip.

But I couldn't get a grip.

It was like I had just lost my little sister.

And like I had lost my little girl.

"Oh, God, Angel, Angel, Angel!"

Yelling as loud as I could, I made fists and punched the chunky bark of the fir tree hard, over and over, until finally actual pain seeped into my seared consciousness. I stared at my knuckles, saw the blood, the missing skin, the splinters.

The physical pain hurt much less than the mental kind.

My Angel, my baby, had been snatched away. She was with bloodthirsty man-wolf mutants eager for her blood who would turn her over to despicable lab geeks who wanted to take her apart. Literally.

Then I was crying, clinging to the tree as if it were a lifeboat from the Titanic, and I sobbed and sobbed until I'd make myself sick. Gradually, the sobs slowed to shudders, and I wiped my face on my shirt, leaving streaks of blood.

I sat in the tree until my breathing calmed and my brain seemed to be hitting on most cylinders again. My hands were killing me, though. Note to self: Stop punching inanimate objects.

Okay. It was time to go down and be strong, to get everyone together, to come up with Plan B.

And one other thing -- Ari's last words were still screaming in my brain: We're the good guys.