TWENTY-EIGHT

You would think the mere thought of impending death would be enough to keep a girl mind-racingly, heart-thunderingly adrenalized, but all I felt was tired.

I was curled up in a ball on my old bed under my old throw blanket. As stale and dusty as it was, it was the last place that had felt like home, and it was the only place I wanted to be. Fang lay opposite me on his side. He'd been silent, just running his hands through my hair and checking his watch in a way that I'm sure he thought was discreet. Neither of us had put clothes on. Naked and afraid as we came.

All I wanted to do was sit in the proverbial afterglow, to stare at Fang and giggle like a normal teenager who'd just lost her virginity. I wanted to tell him I loved him until I'd sucked up all the oxygen in the room with my words. But my life was not, and had never been, about the want tos. It'd been about the had tos, about the can't dos, about the never will dos.

"Do you think it'll be right at midnight?" I asked. It came out as a scared, hoarse whisper.

"We don't even know if anything's going to happen," Fang said in response, but it was obvious to me how much he was struggling to keep his face calm. I wasn't sure if it was more for my sake or for his own. I tried to put myself in his shoes, imagine what it would be like if he were the one who was going to die sometime in the next few hours, but it was too much for me to handle.

I closed my eyes and tried to breathe.

"But if it does," I said quietly. "Do you think it'll be at midnight?"

He ran his hand through my hair again and didn't answer.

The odd state of indifference I'd entered should've been terrifying to the Max in me that needed control, that feared the unknown, that relied on pure stress to plunge into uncertain situations, but I was not that Max anymore, or at least not now. I was some sort of vulnerable exoskeleton of a person. My life was not flashing before my eyes because my life didn't matter.

But the people in it did. Their faces were cycling incessantly behind my eyelids: the halfway smile Iggy gave when I said something witty enough to gain his approval; the musical tone of Nudge's voice as she talked about the love she had for her family; the wide-eyed wonder on the Gasman's face when he saw something new and unfamiliar; the feel of Angel in my arms as a baby, a toddler, a child. My throat was threatening to close.

"They're going to hate me."

Fang considered this but said nothing.

"Say it."

"Say what?"

"Whatever you're thinking."

He hesitated for moment. "They don't hate you."

"But they're pissed."

"They're upset, Max," he said gently. "They're devastated. You would be too. But they don't hate you."

I don't know why I bothered asking. Of course they were. I'd left without saying goodbye because I was selfish; I hadn't been able to fathom the thought of looking at them all for the last time, of reliving all the ways I'd loved them and all the ways I'd failed them, of watching them cry.

"What would you have done?" I whispered.

Fang's guard slipped down, and he softened. I could practically see the gears of his mind whirring as he hypothetically swapped places with me.

After a long minute of thinking, he nodded just barely. "The same thing. Except..." His expression changed; he looked hurt. "I wouldn't have run away from you."

The words weren't accusatory but they deserved to be. Why had I run away from Fang? Because I'd felt weak and afraid. Vulnerable. I'd wanted to hide from my cowardice. Or maybe it was the two percent bird in me—animals prefer to die alone, after all. To hide from predators. To protect their own corpses.

The apology on my lips died. I didn't need to answer him. He knew I was sorry.

"You did it, you know," he said.

"What?"

"Saved the world. Took control. Like Jeb said you would."

I rolled my eyes. "Please."

"I'm serious. You were so convinced that we'd never do it."

"Excuse me? Wasn't it you who said 'let's find an island somewhere?' You were fully prepared to run off and hide."

"That's what I'm saying. I wanted to run off and hide. I was done. You wanted to fight. To keep going. I thought we were just a cog in their machine, stuck in a vicious cycle we couldn't possibly break out of. One of their sheep. But I was wrong. We weren't the sheep." He shook his head. "We were the lions."

We were the lions. I thought of the nature documentaries Gazzy had been so fascinated with back when we had cable. I vividly remembered watching a group of lionesses take down a gazelle. Back then, I'd cringed at the gore and the ruthless killing of the helpless animal. Today? Older and wiser and beaten down by life, I sympathized with the lions. They were just trying to stay alive in a world that made it so difficult to.

I had moments to consider this before it happened.

I was launched into a state of limbo. I heard myself gasp in surprise and vaguely recognized Fang yelling my name and gripping my arm.

But it didn't matter. Because this was it. This was death.

Images danced before my eyes again, only this time it didn't feel like some foreign source was forcing them into my head. This felt natural, like a dream. But it wasn't a dream—it was a memory.

Jeb is sitting across from me at a small dining table in a room that looks much like the break room of an office. A cup of tea is in his hands.

"You're slated for greatness. Danger, sure, and hardship. But greatness."

I'm confused and totally beyond annoyed. "What if I don't want danger and hardship and greatness? I think I've had enough of that already," I snap. "Having a hard enough time handling the day-by-day without dying as it is."

"You'll survive," Jeb says with a knowing sort of smile.

"You don't know that!" I yell. The familiar heat of anger spreads through me. I know my cheeks are turning bright red as the rage begins to fester. "You can't!"

"Of course I can," Jeb says.

"What are you talking about?" I demand. "You can't see the future!"

Jeb shakes his head. "You're right. I can't do that. But there are ways to know things without seeing the future."

"What, did you read my palm when I was sleeping?" I snarl.

Jeb sighs heavily. "No, Max. Tarot cards."

"Tarot cards?"

"Of course not tarot cards," he says frustratedly. It is uncharacteristic of him to lose his patience, but I can tell that he's struggling with what to tell me. It's obvious that he's under a gag order, but I have no idea who the judge is.

"Max," he says. The syllable bounces off the walls. His demeanor fades from exhaustion into a seriousness I have not seen from him in years. "I need you to pay attention. This is very important."

His eyes meet mine. It becomes abundantly clear that he wants to tell me something important but can't; he is trying to relay it all to me with his gaze.

"You were created durably, for longevity beyond human years. Remember that—no matter what they tell you."

The words fall into the stiff air of the room. I frown.

"Who are 'they?'" I ask. Jeb just stares at me; he knows that I know that he can't tell. "Jeb," I say desperately, but I stop, because I can't come right out and tell him that he's scaring me. Because I'm in charge. I can't get scared.

"You're going to meet a lot of challenges on your way, Max. All of you will. But it will always come down to you. And no, it's not fair. You didn't choose this. But you have always stepped up to the plate and delivered on what was expected of you, and I know this will be no different. Your life is your life only."

"This is stupid," I say sharply.

"You're not indestructible," he says, as if it's relevant. I don't see how it is. "I don't want you to live your life under the impression that you can't be killed. I need you to understand that. You're mortal. But you can't be… programmed to die."

"What are you talking about?"

"Science," he says bluntly.

"Well, you're going to have to explain a little bit more than that, Jeb," I spit, "because it doesn't sound like Punnett squares or ionic bonds to me."

"We've done a lot of impressive things with science, Max, but we haven't quite mastered the art of planning when certain things will happen in the body. Or planning gene splicing, or really planning anything." He shrugs. "The human genome can't be told when to mutate. It just does." I open my mouth to speak, but he is already prepared with an answer to my question. "Neither can the human-avian genome. Or the human-lupine genome."

"Then why can Angel read minds?" I demand. "Why can the Gasman imitate everything?"

"Honestly? We're still trying to figure it out. Your genes will continue to mutate as you age. Whether or not that leads to complications later on in life is still to be seen, but the top geneticists here are under the belief that any changes won't be fatal. When I told you that you were the most important thing to happen to science since the Human Genome Project, I wasn't exaggerating."

"Say genome again and see what happens." My voice is low and lethal. "I dare you."

It's unlike Jeb and I to butt heads like this—he is somebody I respect, the only person outside of the flock that I feel even remotely connected to—but I'm sick of him speaking in tongues.

He opens his mouth to speak but decides against it after seeing my expression.

I look at him flatly. "Okay. I'll bite. So you're trying to tell me that any ol' person on the street's genome could mutate and they'd start reading minds?"

He shakes his head. "It has to do with DNA. Yours is slightly different in that the amino acids form a bit differently—your base proteins—"

"Okay," I say, putting a hand to my forehead. "You might as well be speaking French. Skip the biology lesson. The key points here are that—"

"Your future is undecided," he says. "Totally unknown. Whatever happens once you get out of here—"

"—Once I get out of here?" I say, feeling my heart kick into a gallop at the mere suggestion of the possibility of freedom. "What do you mean, 'Once I get out of here?'" Jeb's guarded expression infuriates me more. "Jeb. What. Do. You. Mean."

"Whatever happens for the rest of your life is your doing only. No interference from us. We can, you know, plant certain... seeds," he says vaguely, looking pained at what seems to be an inability to let me in on this slice of information, "ways to guide you on your way or—maybe provide you information—"

"What do you mean?" My voice is louder now. Tears prickle at the corner of my eyes, but I don't fully understand why. "ANSWER ME!"

The door slams open and three Whitecoats burst in, each looking furious and alarmed.

"What's going on in here?" says the burly-looking one.

My chest is heaving as I bite back anything incriminating. Jeb has wiped his expression totally clean.

"Chatting about the week going forward. I hear it's supposed to be busy."

The only woman of the group has a sneer on her face. "What exactly are you telling her?"

"Nothing really." Jeb's voice is smooth, steady. "Well, nothing she can't know. We're just chatting, right, Max?"

"Yeah," I say furiously, and in that moment, I am certain I've blown our cover. This will be the end of any alone time with Jeb Batchelder. "Yes."

The burly one snorts. "Bullshit."

"You can't compromise the subjects!" one of the Whitecoats, the tallest one, shouts. He gestures in the hallway. An Eraser comes in, wolfy and mean, and my body reacts instinctively: fight or flight. Or, in my case, both.

"Take her to the procedure room!" Tall Whitecoat orders. "We've tampered with her memory enough because of you. Do you want to be the one responsible for causing extensive damage to her brain?"

"Extensive damage?" Jeb says urgently. "What the hell do you mean by that?"

When Jeb said nothing, the Whitecoat scoffed in disgust. "You've gotten too attached! You're ruining our research!"

"I haven't told her anything she can't know!" Jeb is on his feet now, taking steps to stand in front of me protectively. "She's just a child!"

"She's not a child, Batchelder! She's an experiment!"

"Why can't she be both?" Jeb thunders, but it's too late; the Eraser shoves Jeb aside and hauls me over his shoulders. Fear pulses through me at the thought of the procedure table.

Tall Whitecoat's back is to me, but his face must be one of rage, because the tone he takes is lethal. "Silas won't be happy about this."

Jeb doesn't look at him, though. Jeb looks at me. His blue eyes are glassy, and I am startled to realize that he is fighting back tears. I've never seen Jeb cry before, and it makes me even more afraid.

He looks like he has so much that he wants to say, but his lips are pressed into a thin line. We round the corner into the procedure room, but before the door closes, I hear Jeb's low, hissing voice.

"Silas isn't happy about anything."

Then, there was an absence of everything: no light and no darkness, no silence and no noise; I had just enough time to remember the sensory deprivation chamber I'd been forced into at Itex and knew that this was it, this was death, and just when I'd made my peace with it—that the end was here, that I was dead, that I was leaving behind a group of motherless children—I heard it: Fang's voice, distorted by tears, breathing my name over and over, like it was the last thing he'd ever say.

I was alive.

I came out of the vision like a drowning child might: gasping for breath, frantic, and half-crying, half-choking. The first thing that came out of my mouth was, in that moment, the only thing that could anchor me to whatever reality I was returning to:

"Fang!"

"I'm here," he said, and he was—he was directly next to me, almost on top of me—but his voice was far away and shaky in a way I'd never heard on him before. My eyes landed on his face but saw nothing but his red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks. "Are you okay?"

I was absolutely sucking wind. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get enough air in; the world started getting foggy around me, but then there was Fang, holding my head so close to his that our noses were touching.

"What just happened?" he said urgently. "What's going on? Are you okay? Are you in pain?"

I'm fine, I wanted to say. I'm alive. But all that came out was a broken, desperate cry and an absolute waterfall of tears.

Then Fang was pulling me upright from the bed and crushing me in his arms, but the world was moving in that cut-scene frame-by-frame way again. My body moved like a ragdoll's. In the next minute, I felt his hands on my neck, shoving my hair out of the way and touching the skin there.

"Max?" he said urgently again. I'd never heard his voice so unsteady, never seen him so panicky and uncertain. He was scared in a way I didn't know Fang could get scared. "Max, it's still there," he said nervously, pressing his fingers into my neck. "It's still there. What just happened?"

I was still hyperventilating. As we've discussed, Fang doesn't exactly keep the levelest of heads when he's afraid, so I couldn't blame him when he grabbed my shoulders and made me meet his eyes.

"You have to tell me what's going on, Max, please."

"I'm okay," I huffed out. "I'm—I'm not—I'm not going to—"

"You're not going to what, Max?" he demanded. "What?"

"I'm not going to—to die."

"How do you know?" When I didn't answer right away, he gripped my shoulders and shook me a little too strongly, ignoring when I recoiled at his grasp. "Max—how do you know?"

"J—J—Jeb!" I coughed out, and then I was crying all over again.

It wasn't a good enough answer, or any answer at all, really, but he accepted it and gathered me in his arms again. His meticulous fingers continued to trace the date—today's date—where it was tattooed on the back of my neck. But for the first time, it didn't feel burning hot anymore. It didn't feel like a weight on my shoulders anymore. It didn't matter if it stayed there forever. It wasn't real.

It was just another stupid part of their plan, something so they'd get their way. Another way to manipulate me and instill fear. Another way to remind me that I was just one of their sheep.

Fang pulled back one final time, giving me his ultimate I trust you so tell me what the ever-loving hell is going on right now eyes. He was asking how sure.

It struck me in that moment how utterly absurd it all was: the School's existence at all, our lives, our escape, our years-long journey to get to the bottom of this, and the fact that we'd been a rat in their maze for sixteen years and somehow—somehow—we'd come out on top.

Then I was laughing, really laughing, and the sound was so inappropriate for the air of the room that Fang looked concerned that he'd lost me in a totally different way than he'd been planning on.

"You're right, Fang," I said. It was so obvious now. "We are the lions."