Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

37

The bell clanged jarringly, and rough hands pushed Angel forward. She stumbled, catching herself at the last secod before falling onto coils of razor wire.

Angel wanted to cry. She's been doing this all day - it was late afternoon by now.

She was starving and light-and every muscle ached - and they still made her run.

It was a maze, Angel knew that.

They made it in a huge gymlike room in the School's main building. They rang a bell and pushed her forward, and then she had to run as fast as she could to find the exit. Each time, the maze was different, the exit in a different place. If she slowed down, she got an electric shock so strong it scrambled her brain, or red-hot wires under her feet burned her. So, eyes blurry with tears Angel ran forward blindly, taking this turn and that until she finally stumbled out the exit.

Then she would get a sip of water and a five-minute rest while they redid the maze.

Angel sniffled, trying to keep quiet. She hated this! If only she knew beforehand - if only she knew, she could run through fast and not get shocked and burned.

Angel sat up, a tingle of excitement running down her spine. She closed her eyes and tried to listen to what the whitecoats were thinking.

One of them wanted to let an Eraser loose in the maze, have it fight with her, see how strong she really was. One of them thought she should increase the heated wires so she always had to run on them, whether she was slowing down or not. Then he could study the effect of stress on her adrenaline levels.

Angel wanted them all to burn in h-e-double toothpicks forever.

One of them was designing the next maze, the creep.

Angel concentrated, trying to look as thugh she was resting. Someone gave her another sip of water, and she sucked it down fast. She could see the rough plan of the maze! It was in her mind because it was in the whitecoats mind. Deliberately, Angel breathed in an out, looking soent, but she felt a new surge of possibility.

She got it. She knew what the next maze would looks like. Blinking tiredly, Angel sat up, keeping her eyes unfocused. In her mind, she was reviewing the maze's layout: a quick right, then another right, then a left, skip the next three rights and take the fourth one . . . and so on, till she saw the exit.

She could see all the traps, the dead ends, the paths that led nowhere.

She could hardly wait to blow her minds. This would be fun!

A whitcoat grabbed her, made her stand in front of the new maze's entrance.

The bell clanged.

Someone pushed her.

Angel took off. Running as fast as she could in case all the wires were hot, she took a quick right, another right, then a left, and so on. She raced through with record speed, with no hesitation. She didn't get shocked once and never felt a hot wire under her feet.

She burst out of the maze's exit, then collapsed onto the cool wooden floor.

Time passed.

Words floated to her: Amazing. Cognitive ability. Interpretive skills. Creative problem solving. Dissect her brain. Preserve her organs. Extract her DNA.

A voice said "No, no, we can't disect her brain just yet." The speaker laughed, as if it were funny. His voice sounded . . . like she'd heard it in a fairy tale or something like at night, or at home, or with Max . . .

Angel blinked and swam toward consciousness. She made the mistake of looking up. An older man was there. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and was smiling at her. She got no thoughts from him whatsoever. He looked . . .

"Hello,Angel," said Jeb Batcheler kinly. "I haven't seen you in a long time. I missed you, kiddo."