Flighted

The Truth of the End

AN: Well folks, more lines from Maximum Ride but we're close to fully breaking it off. Edward will make his appearance soon, before the Flock leaves. 😊

♥♥♥♥♥♥

We gawked at Fang.

"It's a laptop," Max said, frowning in disappointment. "So what? With no Internet, all we could do is play solitaire. We need either actual food or a marker for Akila's grave."

"It's a tablet, actually," Fang corrected as we came nearer. "It's smaller, see? And it has a touch screen!"

"If only it was useful in some form for survival," I said sarcasticly.

Fang frowned at me.

Max rolled her eyes at Fang. "Can we eat it?" She flicked the hard casing. "Can we use it to fend off the psycho hounds?" Max gestured toward Nudge's bandaged cheek.

"Let me see that." Nudge took the tablet, turning it over in her hands. "I can sense the owner's fingerprints. He was anxious, searching for something."

"I knew it!" Gazzy punched the air victoriously. "I knew there were still other people alive out there. It's not just us and the Cryenas!"

I wondered what they'd do if they found out about the Cullens. Would they be happy, suspicious, or scared?

Fang's eyes flickered towards Max in some unspoken communication.

"It means answers." Angel sat on the cracked kitchen counter, swinging her legs. I assumed she was answering someone's thoughts.

Max bit her lip. "Does it even work?"

Nudge held down the power button for a few moments and then looked up with a frown. Nothing happened.

"That's a pity," I murmured. "Would be nice if it worked."

"There's no electricity to charge it, either," Fang said, flicking a dead light switch.

Max sighed. "Like I said, just another useless piece of junk some poor sap left behind." She grabbed some plastic flowers from a table and turned to go outside.

"Max, be careful out there," Gazzy said. "We definitely heard some kind of wild animal." He turned to me. "That goes for you too."

I smiled slightly. "Thanks, I guess, but I can handle myself."

"What if we could charge it another way?" Iggy called after Max. A high-pitched squeal made her cover her ears, and Max turned to see him standing in the doorway to the next room, holding up a dusty radio.

"Where did you get that?" Max asked.

Iggy grinned. "Oh, just another useless piece of junk I found lying around." He fidgeted with the dial, but all we heard was the crackle of static. "Looks like the antenna's shot, but it has a charging panel-solar powered."

"Doesn't that mean you need sun?" Max squinted out the window. The once sunny sky was dark with ash.

"She still might have some juice in her." Iggy shrugged. "Worth a shot."

Somehow Iggy managed to plug the tablet into the radio, a feat of itself, and we all crowded around. The tiny red light on the power cord blinked on, and we waited.

"It's not working," Max huffed, tapping the screen.

"Patience, Max. Just give it a minute," Total said.

But after five minutes, the radio started to hum with the effort, and the light was still red.

"It's not going to be enough." Max started to pace.

Then, just as the radio took its last breath, a welcoming note chirped from the speakers, and our reflections faded as the screen glowed to life.

Nudge's hands hovered over the keyboard, and the rest of the flock huddled around her. "What should I look up?"

"Whoa, you actually have Internet?" Iggy asked. "I'm guessing this guy probably hasn't paid his wireless bill in a while."

"Five G." Nudge wiggled her magnetic fingers. "I know it makes no sense, but don't question it."

"That's pretty cool either way," I said, looking at the tablet with curiousity.

We tried all the major news sites. Over and over, we saw the same thing: a white screen with stark black type that read CONNECTION TO SERVER FAILED. Then Nudge started trying anything she could think of. We squealed when an actual site popped up, but saw that it was a shopping list for a homemade disaster kit. Gazzy found "antidiarrheal medication" particularly hilarious, though I just rolled my eyes at his reaction.

But no type of any kind of contact with people. Nada.

Nudge was trying yet another website.

"Hey, this one works!" She grinned as the log-in field popped up.

"Seriously?" Max smirked at her. "The world ends and you want to check your Fotogram? Here, I'll give you another 'like.' "

"Shh," Nudge said, swatting at Max's hand. "I just want to see something."

She typed #apocalypse into the search field, and the screen lit up with images-pages and pages of disaster pics taken with cell-phone cameras. Most of the scenes were beyond anything we could've imagined. Dark and gory and horrific.

"Whoa," Max croaked.

"Oh lord," I sighed.

Because what else could you say about a selfie of a woman clutching a Bible as, behind her, a two-hundred-foot tsunami obliterated Los Angeles?

Or a shot of silver fish flopping on marble staircases while the train tunnels in New York's Grand Central Station flooded with water?

We saw the city of Tokyo decimated by earthquakes. The president of France speaking to the press, wearing a hazmat suit. A row of houses in Spain buried by a freak blizzard.

It was as if the world had been tossed in a dryer set on turbo.

A sea of blue-masked faces showed us Hong Kong under quarantine. We saw forests burning, buildings burning, and people burning. Dead birds rained from the sky in so many of the pictures, they had their own hashtag: #crispycritters.

This was the end of the planet, chronicled before us.

There were hundreds of thousands of images, but the events were so varied, the effects so utterly weird, that everything started to blur together.

What happened? didn't begin to cover it. It seemed like everything had happened, and more.

"Hey, we should check the blog," Fang said suddenly. "I haven't updated it since we took off in Pierpont's jet, but it had a ton of followers..."

Nudge's fingers were already flying across the touch screen as she nodded. "And maybe some of them are still checking in."

My stomach twisted as I thought about what the Cullens had seen. I couldn't blame them for seeking me out after seeing what I had on the tablet. They must have been desperate for some kind of human contact. And Edward had probably thought I was dead. He must have been happy to hear I was alive. I definitely was happy to be alive, that's for sure.