Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

13

Her mouth was so dry. Her head ached -- everything ached. Angel blinked several times, trying to wake up. Above her was a dark brown plastic roof. A cage. A dog crate. A Kanine Kamper, size medium. Fuzzy thoughts pushed at her brain as she struggled to a sitting position. She knew where she was -- she would recognize that chemical, disinfectant smell anywhere. She was at the school.

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Quickly, Angel turned in the direction of the thoughts.

In a crate next to hers were two other children, younger than she. Their eyes, too big for their hungry faces, locked onto her.

"Hi," Angel whispered. She didn't feel any whitecoats around -- just the scrambled, incoherent thoughts of these kids.

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The other children stared without answering. Trying to smile, Angel looked at them more closely. She thought they were both boys. One had rough, scaly skin -- literally scaly, like a fish, but just in patches, not all over. Not a happy effect.

The other one just looked like . . . a mistake. He had extra fingers and toes, and hardly a neck. His eyes were huge and bulging, and the hair on his head was sparse. It made angel's heart hurt just to look at him.

"I'm Angel," she whispered again. "Do you have names?"

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The two boys looked afraid, and they turned from her and edged farther back in their cage.

Angel swallowed hard and was quiet. What had happened to Max and the others? Were they in cages too?

A door opened and footsteps sounded on the linoleum floor. Angel felt the caged boys trembling with dread, crazed, swirling thoughts of fear crashing through their brains. They huddled together at the back of their cage. But the two whitecoats stopped in front of Angel's.

"Oh, my God -- Harrison was right," one of the whitecoats said, hunching down to stare at Angel through the grate. "They got her! Do you know how long I've wanted to get my hands in this one?" He turned excitedly to the other whitecoat. "Did you ever read the Director's precept report about this recombinant group?"

"Yeah, but I wasn't sure I believed it," said the other whitecoat, a woman. "Are you saying this is Subject Eleven? This little girl?"

The first whitecoat rubbed his hands together with glee. "Your looking at it." He leaned forward to unhook her cage door. "Come on, little thing. You're wanted in lab seven." Oh, yes! Man, when I section her brain . . .

Angel winced, then rough hands dragged her out.

Pathetic relief washed through the boys that it was she who was being taken and not them.

Angel didn't blame them one bit.