James Patterson - The Final Warning

Maximum Ride 4 - The Final Warning

By Patterson, James

To the reader:

THE IDEA FOR the Maximum Ride series comes from earlier books of mine called When the Wind Blows and The Lake House, which also feature a character named Max who escapes from a quite despicable School. Most of the similarities end there. Max and the other kids in the Maximum Ride books are not the same Max and kids featured in those two books. Nor do Frannie and Kit play any part in the series. I hope you enjoy the ride anyway.

Prologue

CATCHING BIRD FREAKS: HAZARDOUS DUTY AT BEST

Windsor State Forest, Massachusetts

Ssssss.

The soldiers armor made an odd hissing noise. But besides the slight sound of metal plates sliding smoothly, flawlessly over one another, the troop was unnaturally quiet as it moved through the woods, getting closer to the prey.

The faintest of beeps caused the team leader to glance down at his wrist screen. Large red letters scrolled across it: ATTACK IN 12 SECONDS... 11... 10...

The team leader tapped a button, and the screens image changed: a tall, thin girl with dirt smears on her face and a tangle of brown hair, glaring out at him. TARGET 1 was superimposed on her face.

... 9... 8...

His wrist screen beeped again, and the image changed to that of a dark-haired, dark-eyed, scowling boy. TARGET 2.

And so on, the image changing every half second, ending finally with a portrait of a small, scruffy black dog looking at the camera in surprise.

The team leader didnt understand why Target 7 was an animal. He didnt need to understand. All he needed to know was that these targets were slated for capture.

... 3... 2... 1...

The leader emitted a whistle pitched so high that only his team members could hear it. He motioned toward the small run-down cabin they had surrounded in the woods.

Synchronized perfectly, as only machines can be, the eight team members shouldered eight portable rocket launchers and aimed them straight at the cabin. With a whoosh, eight large nets made of woven Kevlar strands shot out from the cannons and unfolded with geometric precision in midair, encasing the cabin almost entirely.

The team leader smiled in triumph.

THE PREY HAVE BEEN CAPTURED, SIR, the team leader said in a monotone. Pride was not tolerated in this organization.

Why do you say that? the Uber-Director asked in a silky tone.

The cabin has been secured.

No. Not quite, said the Uber-Director, who was little more than a human head attached by means of an artificial spinal column to a series of Plexiglas boxes. The bioengine that controlled the airflow over his vocal cords allowed him to sigh, and he did. The chimney. The skylight.

The team leader frowned. The chimney would be impossible to climb, he said, accessing his internal encyclopedia. Photographs of the prey scrolled quickly across the team leaders screen. Suddenly an important detail caught his attention, and he froze.

In the corner of one of the photographs, a large feathered wing was visible. The team leader tracked it, zooming in on just that section of the image. The wing appeared to be attached to the prey.

The prey could fly.

He had left routes of escape open.

He had failed!

The Uber-Director closed his eyes, sending a thought signal to the nanoprocessors implanted in his brain. He opened his eyes in time to see the team leader and his troop vaporize with a crackling, sparking fizzle. All that was left of them was a nose-wrinkling odor of charred flesh and machine oil.

A DIFFERENT FOREST. Not telling you where.

Okay, it doesnt take a genius to figure out that funerals suck. Even if you didnt know the person, its still totally sad. When you did know the person, well, lets just say its much worse than broken ribs. And when you just found out that the person was your biological half brother, right before he died, it adds a whole new level of pain.

Ari. My half brother. We shared the same father, Jeb Batchelder, and you can believe those quotes around father.

Id first known Ari as a cute little kid who used to follow me around the School, the horrible prison-science facility where I grew up. Then wed escaped from the School, with Jebs help, and to tell you the truth, I hadnt given Ari another thought.

Then hed turned up Eraserfied, a grotesque half human, half wolf, his seven-year-old emotions all askew inside his chemically enhanced, genetically modified brain. Hed been turned into a monster, and theyd sent him after us, with various unpredictable, gruesome results.

Then there had been that fight in the subway tunnels beneath Manhattan. Id whacked Aris head a certain way, his neck had cracked against the platforms edge... and suddenly hed been dead. For a while, anyway.

Back when I thought I had killed him, all sorts of sticky emotions gummed up my brain. Guilt, shock, regret... but also relief. When he was alive, he kept trying to kill us- the flock, I mean. Me and my merry band of mutant bird kids. So if he was dead, that was one less enemy gunning for my family.

All the same, I felt horrible that I had killed someone, even by accident. Im just tenderhearted that way, I guess. Its hard enough being a homeless fourteen-year-old with, yeah, wings, without having a bunch of damp emotions floating all over the place.

Now Ari was dead for real. I hadnt killed him this time, though.

I need a tissue. Total, our dog, sniffled, nuzzling around my ankles like I had one in my sneakers.

Speaking of damp emotions.

Nudge pressed closer to me and took my hand. Her other hand was over her mouth. Her big brown eyes were full of tears.

None of us are big criers, not even six-year-old Angel, or the Gasman, whos still only eight. Nudge is eleven, and Iggy, Fang, and I are fourteen. Technically, were all still children.

But it takes a lot, and I mean a whole lot, to make any of us cry. Weve had bones broken without crying about it. Today, though, it was like another flood was coming, and Noah was building an ark. My throat hurt so much from holding back tears that it felt as though Id swallowed a fist of clay.

Angel stepped forward and gently tossed a handful of dirt onto the plain wooden box at the bottom of the big hole. A hole it had taken all of us three hours to dig.

Bye, Ari, she said. I didnt know you for very long, and I didnt like you for a lot of it. But I liked you at the end. You helped us. You saved us. Ill miss you. And I didnt mind your fangs or anything. Her little voice choked, and she turned to bury her face against my chest.

I stroked her hair and swallowed hard.

The Gasman was next. He too sprinkled dirt on the coffin. Im sorry about what they did to you, he said quietly. His spiky blond hair caught a shaft of sunlight and seemed to light up this little glen. It wasnt your fault.

I snuck a quick glance over at Jeb. His jaw was clenched, his eyes full of pain. His only son lay in a box in the ground. He had helped put him there.

Bravely, Nudge stepped closer to the grave and tossed some dirt onto it. She tried to speak but started crying. I drew her to me and held her close.

I looked at Iggy. As if sensing it, he raised his hand and dropped it. I dont have anything to say. His voice was gruff.

Next it was Fangs turn, but he waved me to go. Total had collapsed in sobs on my shoes, so I gently disengaged him and stepped over to the grave. I had two hothouse lilies, and I let them float onto the coffin of my half brother.

As the flock leader, I was supposed to come up with a speech. There was no way to sum up what I was feeling. I had killed Ari once, then watched him die again as he saved my life. Id known him when he was a cute little kid, and Id known him as a hulking Eraser. I had fought him almost to death, and I had ended up choosing him over the best friend Id ever had. Id hated everything about him, then found out we shared half of our human DNA.