Maximum Ride Forever (23 page)

LET’S FINISH IT
, I repeated as I stumbled down the hallway a few minutes later. Kate and Star had stayed to guard the lab, but I didn’t need them now. Though my body was still weak from the Taser, as my systems rebooted, the surge of adrenaline made me feel almost high. It was time to meet the Remedy.

But when I turned into the tunnel, something grabbed my arm and I almost jumped out of my skin.

“One Light,” a boy with large bloodshot eyes and open sores on his face gasped at me. I felt a stab of pity for him, though he was clawing at me murderously while choking on his own coughs.

The H8E virus
, I thought, wrenching myself away from his grasp. I wondered how many of the other Doomsday
kids on the battlefield were infected. My mom had said bird kids and mutants were immune, but if the Remedy was now poisoning his own, it couldn’t be a good sign.

As I ran from the sick boy, I realized how vulnerable I was here, alone, limping through an underground, closed space that we knew contained nuclear weapons. I crept more carefully, sticking to what I thought was the main passage, but I had no map, and all these dark, damp passageways looked exactly the same.

I thought I heard a squeak behind me—maybe a Horseman, or another infected kid—but when I listened, I only heard my heart thundering in my ears.

“Max!” Dylan whispered directly behind me in the dark, and I almost screamed bloody murder. “Shh!” he said, clamping a hand over my mouth.

Naturally, I bit his hand.

“Are you serious?” I demanded. “Who
does
that to a person?” Then I noticed he was alone. “Where’s Gunther-Hagen?” I demanded. “You said you knew exactly where his lair was.”

“It’s been evacuated. I tore the place apart, but the guards—” He eyed my puffy eyes and wobbly legs and stopped mid-sentence. “What happened to you?”

That question was completely overwhelming.

Well, Jeb was creating a master race using Fang’s DNA, I got Tased and nearly Horsemanized, the Deceitful Duo showed up to save the day, and now it feels wrong to hate them, even though I still do. Kind of.

“Jeb is dead,” I said, drastically simplifying things, and Dylan looked shocked. “What were you saying about guards?”

Dylan shook his head, then said, “The Remedy’s Russian guards…”

He turned, and the
RAT-A-TAT-TAT
of machine-gun fire exploded inside the tunnel.

“They followed me!” Dylan yelled, dragging me down a side passageway.

I followed him down winding tunnel after winding tunnel, deeper and deeper into the maze. We passed more sick kids and the smell of death grew stronger, but the echo of military boots thundered after us.

Then Dylan stopped abruptly in front of a black door that looked exactly like all the other black doors. He traced his hand along the front of it.

“What are you doing?” I said, a little hysterically. I heard the thick-tongued shouts of the guards just behind us, and I flat-out
refused
to die before I found the Remedy.

There was a
beep
as the door “read” Dylan, and then the door swung open. “Come on!” he said, yanking me inside just as we started to see the flash-fire of bullets ricocheting off the walls. “We’ll be safe in here.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, but he had already punched a button on the wall, and I realized we were in a rickety elevator.

“Somewhere safe. Just promise not to judge me, okay?”

I gave him a quizzical look, but he just shook his head and sighed.

When the elevator stopped, we stepped into some kind of alternate universe. There were pink silk pillows, mirrored walls, colorful tapestries, and enough perfume to make my lungs seize.

The place was the stuff of my nightmares, basically.

And in the center of an overstuffed chair big enough for two, a gorgeous girl put down her computer and stood up. She was tall and slim and, unlike me, had bathed within the last month and didn’t have blood and gore all over her. I suddenly felt like a horrible, bedraggled rat that was barely human, much less female.

“You came back.” The girl’s large, heavily lashed eyes filled with joy and she came over to Dylan, closer and closer until, to my shock, she curled against him, nuzzling his neck. “Oh, baby, you really came back.”

My eyebrows rose into my hairline as I looked at Dylan over the top of her head.

Consider yourself judged.

I HADN’T KNOWN Dylan could
get
uncomfortable. I’d seen tons of girls throw themselves at him, and he’d always charmingly bantered with them while deflecting their advances. Right now, he was frozen in place, looking like he’d rather go back to the battlefield and resume being bludgeoned by Horsemen.

“Can you hang on just a minute?” he asked Princess Doe Eyes, prying her off him. He pulled me to the side.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he hissed. “I didn’t want her, but Dr. Gunther-Hagen made her as a new match for me.” He dropped his eyes. “To replace you.”

I glanced back at the girl, noting her lack of battle scars, her smooth, soft, clean—everything, the whole cozy room, which even contained a bed.

“Gosh,” I said dryly. “She’s awesome. Can I get back to killing the Remedy now? You know, the crusher of hopes, murderer of billions, destroyer of the world?”

“But we’re safe here,” Dylan sputtered. “And I’m not, I mean, she’s not—”

“Baby, I was so worried about you,” the girl crooned, and flipped silken hair over a slim shoulder. Then her beautiful eyes seemed to notice me for the first time. “Is this a… friend, sweetie?”

“Yes,” he said, taking her hands in his. She blinked up at him with so much naked adoration, I thought I might vomit.

“I’m going,” I announced, and walked back to the elevator. Right now, certain death seemed preferable. I jabbed the elevator button.

“Listen, I know this is hard to understand right now,” Dylan told Stepford Girl quickly. “You think we’re supposed to be together, because that’s what you’ve been told. But we’re not.”

This poor girl had been created with one purpose, and Dylan had to tell her it wasn’t going to work out. He was being so gentle with her, though, so kind. The way I’d never been with him.

Don’t turn around
, I thought guiltily.
Just keep staring at this elevator door.

“But we were made to be together,” she insisted sweetly. “I’ve done everything you wanted, tried to become everything you wanted. I know you like to read, so I’ve been
reading. Since you wanted me to have a name, I took it from this book.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the cover. It was
The Handmaid’s Tale
, by Margaret Atwood.

Margaret A. ImMargaretA. The commenter with “inside info” on Fang’s blog.

“
You’re
ImMargaretA?” I asked, turning to gape at her.

Her eyes widened and darted to Dylan nervously, and then she smiled at both of us, blinking like she had no freaking idea what I was talking about.

“You posted on the blog,” I said testily. “You described the deaths of my flock.
Remember?
”

Margaret’s face flushed. “The doctor let me follow all Horseman’s adventures,” she chirped happily, but I saw the anger behind her eyes when she looked at me—like I was spilling a secret we shared. “So I would know when he would come back to me.”

When she looked back at Dylan, she turned on the charm, but now I saw something else beneath her adoration: fear.

She still thought he was a real Horseman, I realized. And she was terrified.

On the blog, she wasn’t trying to spread false information; she’d only repeated what she had been told was true. She’d really been trying to warn us about the Remedy. About Dylan.

And I’d just sold her out.

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “Just take us to the doctor.”

But she wasn’t having it.

“The doctor is busy,” Margaret A. answered, glaring at me, and then turned back to Dylan with a coy smile. “You must be tired, baby,” she cooed. “Come sit down.”

“I can’t be with you,” Dylan blurted, seeming oblivious to her act. “I love… someone else.”

My chest tightened, but Margaret had finally had enough.

“You can’t be with me?” she snapped, her sugary voice hardening into something more real—something strong. “Well, guess what? Maybe I never wanted to end up with a contract killer, pieced together part by part, my identity wiped clean. But if I have to be a living doll to avoid getting gassed with H8E or blown to pieces in a nuclear blast, I can play along.
Okay?
”

She fixed Dylan with in icy stare, but her eyes were filling with tears.

“Margaret, listen to me,” I said in a low whisper. “You don’t have to pretend anymore. We’re going to get you out of here.”

“There’s no way out,” she said miserably. “He just keeps moving farther down.”

“Down where?” I pressed.

Margaret A. glanced at the mirror, and I met her eyes. Crocodile tears started to roll down her sculpted cheeks, and she broke my gaze. But then, in the mirror, I saw what she’d really been looking at—an imperfection, some kind of seam.

A
door
.

DYLAN PUSHED THROUGH the mirrored door to find a winding metal staircase that reached down what looked like several hundred feet into darkness. It was so narrow, there was no question that only one of us could fit at a time.

Max protested, of course, but Dylan insisted on going first. Even aside from Angel’s warnings about protecting Max, Gunther-Hagen was Dylan’s maker, and he needed to face him alone.

“Don’t fall off,” Margaret warned him.

That warning seemed obvious, but the staircase was so narrow it hugged Dylan’s hips, and as he descended into what felt like the center of the earth, it shuddered and creaked under his weight, threatening to pitch him into
the abyss beneath him. He thought he could hear creatures in water splashing somewhere far below, hissing and snapping their jaws.

But when he finally reached the bottom, the staircase ended on solid ground—a street. Dylan blinked up at a door, confused. It looked exactly like the door to the mansion where he’d first found the doctor. The streets were holographic projections, Dylan knew, but the reproduction was incredible.

The odd sense of déjà vu continued as his boots echoed across the marbled tile and he approached the grand ballroom and saw Dr. Gunther-Hagen sitting in his office chair, just as he’d left him. Alone.

However, this time, hundreds of screens lined the walls—world maps, weather reports, graphs of ash trajectory, and recordings from his Horsemen.

“A10103,” the doctor said, swiveling to greet him.

“Actually, it’s just Dylan.” He removed his worn leather gloves and tossed them to the floor between them.

“How disappointing,” the doctor said, but he was grinning with satisfaction, and it made Dylan’s skin crawl.

“I am not the monster you think I am, Dylan. I only wanted to make you stronger,” he said earnestly. “Look around. You can have the life you want. You don’t even realize you’re fighting against your own kind.”

Dylan laughed aloud, and the harsh sound echoed up into the frescoes. He saw nothing of himself reflected in this egomaniacal man who had created him. Once, this
had been the person Dylan knew best. But he’d become more and more unrecognizable, and now Dylan felt that he had nothing in common with him.

Absolutely nothing.

“You failed,” Dylan announced, leaning menacingly over the doctor. “Jeb is dead, and so are the other Horsemen.” Dylan tapped the screen on his wrist, and the bloody battle replayed on-screen. “You did make me stronger. Stronger than all of them—I’m the only one left.”

“Not only you.” Dr. Gunther-Hagen lifted the sleeve of his white coat, revealing a screen on his wrist that matched Dylan’s. “I injected myself with the serum, of course.” The doctor’s eyes glittered. “My creations shouldn’t be the only ones with a chance at eternal life. You and I are left together, son. Something tells me you didn’t completely overcome your programming, hmm?” He pursed his lips.

Had he? Dylan dropped his eyes. This was what the doctor had done to him—made him question, made him doubt. Dylan had struggled with his origin from the beginning, trying to determine how much was really him and how much was… everything else. He hadn’t become a mindless killer, but apart from that, did he really have any control at all?

Dylan heard footsteps echoing through the entryway and looked at his maker.

“No.” Dylan shook his head sadly. “I just did what you
first
programmed me to do: I couldn’t stop loving Maximum Ride.”

“You thought you’d won, didn’t you?” Max looked at the doctor from the doorway, her eyes like skewers.

“Oh, I have won, child.” Gunther-Hagen sank back in his office chair, unperturbed. “I was just telling Dylan about our coming eternal life.”

“He injected himself with Fang’s DNA,” Dylan explained.

“Is that so?” Max shook her head sadly at the doctor, but she was smiling. “Jeb told me the serum wasn’t quite there yet. You might’ve been trying to live forever, but I’m afraid forever’s going to stop a little shorter than you’d planned.

“And, bummer for you, there’s been a change in power, so things are probably going to get a little rough from here on out. There’s no way you’re getting out of here, Häagen-Dazs. We have you completely surrounded.”

“The last of the world’s righteous survivors, all in one place?” For the first time, Dylan noticed that the doctor was tapping his fingertips carefully against the screen at his wrist. “How convenient.”

Dylan! Max! There’s a bomb!
Angel’s voice rang through his head.

“Where is it?” Max growled, her body rigid with caution, her face muscles twitching in fury.

Dr. Gunther-Hagen opened his pristine white lab coat and started to unbutton his expensive collared shirt, fixing them with his icy, amused gaze.

But when the shirt fell open, there was a mass of wires
and steel canisters where his chest should have been. The doctor wasn’t
rigged
to the bomb.

He
was
the bomb.

“Jeb was kind enough to hook me up to the last reactor…” The doctor swirled slowly around in his office chair, his voice trailing off. “It’s a pity you’ve killed him—how will you disable it now?”

“I guess we’ll just have to kill you,” Max snapped.

“Oh, I hope so,” Gunther-Hagen said, still smiling. “If I die, the bomb engages, and your little army goes down with me.”