Ari had goons with him, four of them. They were all tall and broad in that predictable Eraser sort of way. But Ari wasn't.

In fact he was short still, about Nudge's height, and while he was more muscular than her by a long shot he was still wiry. His fingers ended in sharp claws and when he snarled at me I saw fangs, and the violent red scar running down his face spoke to the kind of casual cruelty that Erasers inflicted on each other all the time, but between his small size and the brown wings he had half-extended, it was hard for me to see him as an Eraser. But that was what he was. He had nearly killed Fang before, and would kill any of us if he had the chance.

"Look who tried to break in somewhere," he said. The words came out mangled around his fangs. "Again. Max and her little merry band of mutant freaks. How does it feel being a failure at the one thing you try to do over and over, Max?"

"If I'm a freak what does that make you, Frankenwolf?" I shot back. And I did it without an ounce of hesitation. The thing standing in front of me, snarling at me—it wasn't my little brother. Ari had been sweet and kind. This wannabe Eraser was just wearing his skin like a stretched-out sweatshirt. The School had taken a good kid, eager to please and kind, and stretched him and mangled him into the monster across the room from us. "At least I was born this way, not stitched together by some back-alley med school dropout."

"Shut up, Max," Ari snapped. "You always talk too much." He bared his teeth at me. "Maybe I'll rip out your tongue."

"Maybe I'll bite out your throat," I retorted. "Don't need a tongue for that."

His lips drew back even further from his teeth, and he shuddered with barely-controlled rage before calming. "I want to make a deal."

"How's this for a deal?" I suggested. "You take your thugs and go back to California and I let you spend the rest of your miserable life there before I burn the School down."

"You know, I get that it's hard for you to think of things that aren't inside your little bubble because you are just that wrapped up in yourself, but that's not going to happen and you know it. Here's my deal. You give me them—" He gestured at Iggy, Nudge, and Gazzy. Nudge spat on the ground. Atta girl. "—And I let you go." He emphasized you.

"Yeah, and you and Fang and Angel are going to be pals for life," I said drily. "You clearly didn't get the message in all the years you spent with us, but this?" I gestured at the Flock. "Is a family. We're sticking together. So if you want us, come and get us. Because I'm not leaving anybody behind."

That did the trick. "Get the others," Ari snarled. "She's mine."

Well, that sounded healthy. But if wolf-boy wanted a personalized Maximum Ride ass-kicking, who was I to deny him?

He rushed at me, claws bared and fangs out, and I sprinted forward to meet him. I blocked his slashes with my forearms. "Is that all you've got?" I taunted. He lunged at me again. I hopped back and swung a booted foot up, hard and fast.

Did my boots fit me right? No.

Did they make a satisfying thunk when they hit Ari in the center of his chest? You betcha.

He staggered back a step and huffed out a little breath. The split second was enough time for me to get a look around. Fang was toe-to-toe with an Eraser over by a wall of computer towers. He dodged a punch, fired off a kick, and twisted out of the way as the Eraser swung at his side. The Eraser's hand hit the glass separating the towers from the rest of the lab, and spiderweb cracks spread out. The Eraser howled as blood sheeted down.

The others were doing more of the same. They had wised up since that morning in the strawberry field, turned from scared kids into Eraser-bashing mutants powered by fury and capable of giving just as good as they got.

I grinned.

And then Ari came at me. He moved so fast even I had a hard time tracking him, and when his fist hit my temple the world went gray. I stumbled back. I had to get away. He tried to follow me, and while I blocked his next swing, my shoulder jarred.

Pain is a message, Jeb had always told us. I set my shoulders and bared my teeth. "You're gonna need to try harder than that," I wheezed. And then I punched him in the face. I know how to throw a punch, if nothing else.

Which is why I was surprised when it glanced off his cheekbone. Ari had pulled back at the last moment, and although I'd split the skin on his cheek he didn't look too badly off. Of course. He knew me. He knew how I fought almost as well as I did.

I got a sinking feeling as he came at me, teeth and claws bared, too strong and too fast and too smart for me to beat easily. I held my ground as best I could, but he wasn't your typical Eraser. He wasn't the hunks of big dumb muscle that the rest of my Flock were beating.

An Eraser screamed and I saw Angel staring it down, her eyes burning bright in her little face. It hit the ground with a meaty thud.

"Angel! Go!" I shouted, dodging one of Ari's swings. "Get out of here!"

I slammed a wing into Ari's stomach, jerking it back as he tried to grab it, and saw her sprinting into the tunnel, her frilly dress flapping around her.

Ari lunged at me and I dodged, praying that he'd fall flat on his face. He didn't. He caught himself with absurd speed and came at me again, sneakers squeaking against the linoleum. I couldn't counter or block him so I dodged again, and this time he ran facefirst into a shelf full of headpieces. Bluetooths rained down on us.

"All of you, get out of here! I can handle Ari!"

Could I handle Ari? I wasn't sure.

Was I going to risk a single member of my family going up against him? Absolutely not.

I aimed a kick at Ari's kneecap, and he groaned but didn't buckle. He righted himself, and for a long moment we stood and stared each other down. An alarm was blaring somewhere, and I could hear the groans of wounded Erasers and the frantic beeping of broken electronics. And, in the background, the printer was still going. Great. Not only did I have to beat Ari, I had to grab ten thousand individual papers on my way out.

"You're going to lose," Ari panted. "Do you know why?"

Every second he was talking was a second I could use to find an opening. "Enlighten me."

"Because you're old. You're ancient in mutant terms. Outdated and useless—if you'd stayed at the School then you'd already be Eraser hamburger, replaced by somebody better."

"Well, you see, Ari," I said in a completely level tone of voice, and then threw my all into a high kick at his ribs. It connected and he sank down to one knee. I smashed my knee into his face, using my hand in his hair for leverage. "I didn't stay at the School, and just because I've passed the ripe old age of ten—"

Ari raked his claws down my legs, and even as I retreated, pain stinging me, I kept talking. "—I'm pretty sure I could kick the ass of whatever wannabe came at me. So why don't you run back to the whitecoats with your tail between your legs—" Ari had gotten up to his feet now, and came at me again. This time there was nowhere for me to go. My back was up against the wall of those weird helmets.

Did I let that stop me from running my mouth? Of course not.

"—Because really, being a coward is all you're good at," I finished. I got my legs under me as best I could, my hands balled into fists still. If I was going to go out, it was going to be with a fight. "So why don't you come prove me wrong?"

He moved so fast that I barely saw him.

But instead of dodging or swinging, this time I did something different.

I jumped straight up and clung to the cubicles for dear life.

Ari couldn't stop himself fast enough. He plowed into the cubicles, head between my calves for a split second, and then rebounded and hit the ground. Blood sheeted down his face from a huge gash in his forehead.

That was when I struck. I grabbed the closest helmet and dropped to the ground. Ari tried to get up on his elbows but I slammed my foot into his chest again. This time, with him on his back, it had a better effect. He went back down, writhing under me but ultimately unable to fight back. I leaned down and slammed the helmet onto his head.

The effect it had was almost immediate. He yowled in agony, sounding all for the world like a cat about to die. He thrashed around on the floor, helpless, not aiming for me so much as trying to fight the pain. He was defenseless and he had already tried to kill me. He had nearly killed Fang. This was my time to strike, and to protect my Flock.

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill him. Even if he wasn't my little brother any more, I couldn't murder him, and I definitely couldn't do it while he wasn't even trying to hurt me. My breath came in short little pants as I clutched my leather jacket to me. All of a sudden it didn't seem to protect me from the air conditioning half as well as it had before. This Eraser on the floor, screaming in pain—he wasn't my brother. He wasn't the little kid who had looked up to me. But he was still somebody, and I couldn't bring myself to hurt him when he was like this.

I turned on my heel and started running down the hall. I'd get the papers and get out. Maybe I'd get lucky and Ari's brains would leak out of his ears and I wouldn't have to deal with this.

I grabbed handfuls of paper in a daze, not reading the words on them, and sprinted out into the hall with the printer still going. Jeb's words were echoing in my mind. It's okay that you don't have all the answers right now, I could hear him saying, in tune with my pulse pounding in my throat. You've grown from a scared girl in a cage into a strong young woman, Maximum.

As I neared the end of the tunnel a train rushed past me, sending hot air that whipped my hair into a frenzy and tore papers out of my slack grip. The papers twisted in the air, little white replicas of Ari twisting on the floor.

You have something most experiments don't, I could hear Jeb saying. A destiny. A soul.

Whatever they had done to Ari, had they torn his soul out?

The walk to meet back up with the Flock was the longest I'd taken, and I didn't even walk for most of it—I scaled up the nearest fire escape and took to the air, taking a running leap off of a rooftop. All I could think about was that letter Jeb had written.

You're going to save the world, Maximum.

When I touched down in Central Park, I could hear the familiar sounds of my Flock arguing.

"—Should be back by now," Iggy was saying. "Something happened. I'm going after her."

"I'm coming with," Gazzy said, sounding scared but resolute.

"She said not to." That was Fang. "If Max told us to wait here, then she'll come back."

"And she will," I said, walking up to them. They had spread out around the base of a tree. Nudge and Angel were already up in its branches, wrapped up in the extra sweatshirts we had.

"Max!" Gazzy said. "Are you okay? Did you kill Ari?"

Fang gave me a long, quiet look, and I thought about how scared I was when I had pulled him out of the lake. It seemed impossible, but that memory and the memory of Ari screaming in pain held equal weight in my mind. I hated myself for it.

"I got him pretty good," I said. "I guess we'll find out."

"Good." Angel's voice threaded down from her spot up in the tree. "I don't want him to hurt us anymore."

"Me either," Nudge said. "We never did anything to him, why can't he just—" She sniffled. "Why can't he just leave us alone?"

Poor kid.

"I don't know," I said honestly. "Maybe he was always bad and we just didn't notice. Maybe the School made him bad. But I do know that I'm not going to let him hurt you, okay?"

Nudge bobbed her head in a nod, still huddled up in sweatshirts.

"Okay," I said, and crouched down on the grass, setting the papers down in front of me. It wasn't even close to a quarter of what Jeb had left for me, but the letter was there. I snatched that up and folded it up small, tucked it into my pocket, and turned my attention to the papers. They still didn't make sense, but bits of things jumped out at me irregardless. There were buildings, graphs, but the picture that grabbed me was of a girl with hard-set green eyes and long silver-blonde hair. There was a determined scowl on her face and she was a mutant, I could tell, even without seeing scales or wings. We had the same look. The survivor look. I flipped through the pages I had, but that was the only picture of her. I frowned. "Does anybody have the laptop?"

Fang produced a very battered-looking hunk of metal from inside of his coat and set it down gently on the grass. That was it, then. My childhood and the only chance I had of getting a coherent answer, gone in one blow.

"An Eraser stepped on it," Fang said. His eyes met mine. "Sorry."

I sighed. "It's alright. We'll manage." We had managed before. "Jeb wants us to save the world," I said quietly. "And I think we all know what that means."

Fang was the first to speak. "Destroy the School."

"Destroy everything that even touches it," Iggy said. "That's what all that is, isn't it?" He waved a hand in the general direction of the papers. "The stuff that touches it?"

"Burn it down and blow it up and pour gasoline all over the ashes and blow them up," Gazzy said.

Angel's voice floated down again. "Stop them from hurting any more kids."

Nudge was past tears, rough but determined. "Keep them away from us. For good. Forever."

"Yeah," I said, and stood. "Look. I'm going to level with you here. If we try to do this, it's going to be a lot. We're going to have to deal with Ari, and instead of Erasers hunting us it's going to be us walking into their houses with big eat me signs around our necks. It's going to be scary and it's going to hurt, every day, for a long time. The stuff that Jeb gave us—there's pages and pages of it, and I didn't even get all of it. And I don't even know if that is all of it. The School is huge and it's evil and it hurts kids. I don't know how it got us, but I don't think it was pretty."

I took in a deep breath of cool night air. My Flock was looking at me, concern and confusion warring on their faces. "But here's the thing," I said. "It doesn't matter how big they are. Or how tough they are. Or how many Erasers they throw at us. We're smarter, and we're tougher, and we have something they don't."

"Bombs," Gazzy suggested. Iggy stuck out a fist and he bumped it.

"Telepathy," Angel sing-songed.

"A sense of fashion," Nudge said, and grinned a little.

Fang didn't say anything, but he quietly squeezed my hand.

"Yeah," I said. "We've got spirit. They can shoot at us and hunt us, but you know what? We're going to come back, meaner and uglier than before. And we're going to fight them until we win, no matter what they do to us."

"Hell yeah," Iggy said.

I smiled at him, at all of them, and held Fang's hand tighter. The weight of everything had settled solidly on my shoulders, but with these five around me, I could bear it, and maybe that was what being a leader was about. Not being strong for people, but being strong with them. I weighed my next words before I said them, and felt the trueness of them. And then I let them out into the night air. "Guys, I really do think that we can do this."

While Try Not to Scream wouldn't exist without the immeasurably valuable help of Tokoloshe Monster, and while it was undoubtedly shaped by the commentary of many others, it would remain woefully unfinished if it weren't for the contribution of one person in particular. They have always been up to talk meta with me, always ready to offer both criticism and words of encouragement, and always in a perpetual state of excitement about the characters and my writing. They pushed me to think about things in ways that I would never have considered without them, and I'm a better writer and a better person for having known them. It's been almost a year since TNTS was updated, and over two years from when it was first published, and it's hard to believe but we've been friends for even longer than that, but it's true, and every day has been a treasure. They've been with me in the Google Doc commentary as I wrote chapters, with me in the review box when I posted them, with me on Skype video chat when ch26 came out, and while they weren't with me when I wrote the final thirteen thousand words of this over the course of Friday and today, they were with me in spirit because I was doing it for them and I wanted to surprise them. So as we close the first part of MRNB, I'd like to dedicate this installment, as flawed and imperfect as it is, to Kamaria.

I love you, babe. Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much.