A/N: This is post-STWAOES but pre-TFW (because, in my opinion, both TFW and Max sucked. Horribly. But that's a rant for another day.) The following chapters will be longer, I promise; this is more like a prologue than an actual chapter. Rated T because Max can swear like a sailor.

They always found us. Always.

It never mattered where we were, or how well we blended in. They always knew, somehow, and – though I had several nagging suspicions that the "somehow" had to do with a certain backstabbing cretin who liked to call himself my father – I didn't know how. Sometimes I wondered if I even cared anymore.

And so, like last time, and the time before that, and every single freaking time before that, we ran.

We had been at Dr. Martinez's – Mom's – house when it happened. We were eating dinner, as a matter of fact, green bean casserole and grilled chicken and home-made biscuits. If someone was looking through our window, heck, we might have even passed as normal! Just seven kids, two dogs, one woman, and a mountain of delicious food. Perfectly inconspicuous… right?

That was when the gunfire started.

Bang, bang, bang. Three shots shattered the window behind Angel and Gazzy. Glass rained down on them, and they both dived in either direction, their wings snapping out in a flurry of feathers. I shoved my chair out of the way and sprung to my feet, my arms automatically reaching out and shoving Dr. Martinez behind me.

"Iggy – " I started, only to see that he had grabbed Ella protectively and had forced her back as I had done to Dr. Martinez.

More gunfire, this time uncountable, not that I took the time to pause to attempt to count it. I didn't take the time to think – I just did. Like every other fight I'd been in, I set my body on autopilot, my brain focused on only one thing: escape.

It's funny how the words "every other fight I'd been in" seemed to fit together so perfectly in a sentence about my life. Just once, for one tiny little fraction of a second, I wished I was normal. You know, a roof over my head and food on my table and no psycho wackjobs out to take over the world and kill me and my family. But, no, that would simply be too much to ask! One day I'd have to get that silly imagination of mine in check.

We ran into the living room in a pseudo-formation, a clump of wings and fists surrounding Dr. Martinez and Ella. Suddenly, they seemed all-too-breakable, too vulnerable… too losable. The gunfire was coming from two sides now, advancing behind us in a hailstorm of cracking glass and pounding determinedly at the chimney to our left. Already I could see the fragile bricks chipping and cracking. They were trying to drive us out, herding us like mice through a maze. The bullets weren't aimed to kill, just to scare, or maybe maim. They wanted us alive.

I glanced at Fang next to me as another round of bullets hit the chimney. The Flock instinctively pressed inward, further shielding Dr. Martinez and Ella in a layer of bodies.

"U and A," he mouthed silently at me, and I nodded. It wasn't going to be easy, even if we managed to make it to the porch and the sanctuary of the blue sky above. If they had guns meant to injure, then they surely had tranquilizers meant to disable… and then there was the problem of the extra weight. None of us had ever flown for any great length of time toting a body, and we would have to get to high altitude as quickly as possible if we wanted to survive.

Leaving my mother and half-sister behind was not an option.

Like a single entity, a waving amoeba of people and mutants, we shuffled to the front of the house. The gunfire paused: they could hear us moving.

"Fang… Iggy… you've got Dr. Martinez," I whispered as loudly as I dared. "Nudge, we're taking Ella. Angel, Gazzy…"

I took a deep breath. They weren't going to like this part, but I wasn't going to let them argue about it. They knew we didn't have any more time. "Get out of the way as fast as you can. If we get caught, it's not going to be any use to anyone if you get caught, too. Just go."

It was a testament to the seriousness of the situation that they didn't fight it; they simply nodded mutely as we continued to draw closer to the door.

I drew in a controlled, deep breath. "One…. Two…"

Gazzy ran forward and kicked the door open. "THREE!"

He seized Angel's arm and catapulted himself into the air, his wings catching a lucky updraft with a whoosh! In the split-second in which Iggy and Fang linked arms with Dr. Martinez and took off in turn, my ears prickled, listening for the gun-toting bad guys' reactions. There was silence. We had caught them by surprise. That was good. Maybe – just maybe – we had a chance.

In almost complete unison, Nudge and I interlocked our elbows with Ella's and took one, two, three long strides forwards. I could feel the tension in Ella's body as I bent my knees and sprung off the ground. She was just as terrified as we were.

My wings alighted on the air just as the ear-piercing clatter of shots hit the sky once again. I forced my wings to beat in a forceful, rhythmic pattern – up, down, up, down, up, down – surging upward at a slowly but steadily ascending pace.

Bullets whizzed past my head, making my hair flutter in the breeze and my heart stutter… but nothing touched me.

C'mon, Max… c'mon… just a bit higher…

We were rising, higher and higher, almost out of range. We were going to make –

Something hit me in the back of the neck, and a starburst of pain exploded at the top of my spinal cord. I dropped like a rock, my body tumbling forward. The earth rose in front of my eyes, drawing nearer at a fatal pace.

I blacked out.