Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

16

Angel knew she couldn't go in like this much longer.

Her lungs had started burning bad an hour ago; she hadn't been able to feel her leg muscles for longer than that. But every time she stopped running, a sadistic whitecoat -- Reilly -- zapped her with a stick thing. It jolted electricity into her, making her yelp and jump. She had four burn marks from it already, and they really, really hurt. What was worse was she could feel his eager anticipation -- he wanted to hurt her.

Well, he could zap her a thousand million times, if he wanted. This was it -- she couldn't go on.

It was a relief to let go. Angel saw the whole world narrow down to a little fuzzy tube in front of her, and then even that went gray. She sort of felt herself falling, felt her feet tangle in the treadmill belt. Then Angel was lost, lost in a dream, and Max was there. Max was stroking her sweaty hair and crying.

Angel knew it was a dream because Max never cried. Max was the strongest person she knew. Not that she had known many people.

Ripping sounds and a new, searing pain on her skin pulled Angel back. She blinked into white lights. Hospital lights, prison lights. She smelled that awful smell and almost retched. Hands were pulling off all the electrodes taped to her skin, rip, rip, rip.

"Oh, my God, three and a half hours," Reilly was murmuring. "And it's heart rate only increased by seventeen percent. And then at the end -- it was only in the last, like, twenty minutes that it's peak oxygen levels broke."

It! Angel thought and wanted to scream. I'm not an it!

"I can't believe we've got a chance to study Subject Eleven. I've been wanting to dissect this recombinant for four years," another low voice said. "Interesting intelligence levels -- I can't wait to get a brain sample."

Angel felt their admiration, their crummy pleasure. They liked all the things wrong with her, all the ways she wasn't normal. And all those stupid long words added up to one thing: Angel was an experiment. To the whitecoats, she was a piece of science equipment, like a test tube. She was an it.

Someone put a straw into her mouth. Water. She started swallowing quick -- she was so thirsty, like she'd been eating sand. Then another whitecoat scooped her up. She was too tired to fight.

I have to think of how to get out of here, she reminded herself, but thoughts were really hard to string together right now.

Someone opened the door to her dog crate and flopped her inside. Angel lay where she fell -- at least she was lying down. She just had to sleep for a while. Then she would try to escape.

Wearily, she blinked and saw the fish boy staring at her. The other boy was gone. Poor little guy had been gone this morning, hadn't come back. Might not.

Not me, Angel thought. I'm gonna fight. Right . . . After . . . I . . . Rest.