Fang

18

LESS THAN A WEEK LATER, Iggy was working his magic in the kitchen, with real groceries that we’d bought from a real grocery store. He came out, a chef’s hat on his head, big oven mitts on his hands. “Come sit down,” he ordered. “Dinner’s ready.”

Gazzy raced to the table. “Lasagna! Excellent!”

I stood at an open window, looking out over the bloodred canyon, turned to flame by a glorious sunset. We were home. Colorado, that is, where we had lived, post-dog-crate but pre-world- saving-mission. We had a new house there, near where we had lived before. The CSM had built it as a big thank-you for our help in Antarctica and Hawaii.

I had missed these mountains, these gorges. Jeb had brought us here, about five years ago, after he’d kidnapped us to protect us from the mad scientists at the School. Now I was hoping Dr. Gunther-Hagen never found us here. That would have been a little too familiar.

A small black head nudged my leg, and I looked down to see Total smiling up at me. I dropped down to my knees and hugged the furry, Scottie-like body close. “You had a good visit with my mom?”

“Super,” he said. Yes, Total can talk – another advantage to being genetically engineered, if you’re a dog. “I helped out in her office. And Akila loved it.”

My mom is a veterinarian, when she’s not trying to solve global problems through the CSM. And Akila is Total’s… girlfriend. She’s a (non-English-speaking) malamute that we met on our first mission. They’re a match made in a carnival sideshow, but they seem happy. “Yeah? What’d you do?”

Total puffed himself up. “Counseled patients,” he said importantly. “It helps that I speak their language.”

“I bet. Let’s go – before Gazzy eats that whole lasagna. I’m starving.” Total’s small black nose twitched, and we both trotted to the kitchen, where yummy smells wafted toward us.

Fang sat down next to me at the table and quietly linked his ankle around mine. Total hopped up onto a chair between Fang and Nudge.

I dug in to the lasagna, which smelled like heaven, if heaven were hot and cheesy and layered with noodles and red sauce. And maybe it is.

I looked around at my family, the six of us, Total, and now Akila, all sharing a meal together. We were here, far from everyone else. Far from anyone who could hurt Fang. Far from Dylan and Dr. Gummy-Haagen-Dazs. I felt almost like weeping with joy.

I knew it wouldn’t last. It never does.

19

THE NIGHT WIND CAME in my open window. I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling. Somehow, being back in this just-like-the-old-days setting was giving me nasty flashbacks.

I thought about how Jeb had taught us everything he’d known and then suddenly disappeared. We’d been sure he was dead. After a couple years living on our own, the first nightmare in recent history: Erasers – a human-wolf hybrid – had come. They’d attacked us, destroyed our house, and kidnapped Angel. Now that we were back in Colorado, a sense of unease rattled me. I felt as if someone were watching me. Someone with a night telescope?

I shook my head. Must tamp down the paranoia.

As if on cue, I heard a sound from outside. Like a slight scratching. In seconds, I had rolled out of bed, crouched by the window, and quickly peered over the sill.

Nothing. The sky was clear. No one was scaling the wall; no one was rappelling down from the roof.

But there was that sound again. It was closer. My breathing sped up, and my hands curled automatically into fists. Then I saw the doorknob of my room turn very, very slowly. Crap!

My muscles coiled, tightened… A hand crept around the edge of the door, easing it open. I almost gasped. It was an Eraser’s paw. I was sure of it. Huge, hairy, tipped with long ragged claws. I still had scars on one of my legs from claws like that. I slithered toward the door, kneeling behind my desk.

A dark shaggy head poked around the edge of the door. I leaped up – then froze.

“Fang?” I whispered.

My eyes whipped down to his hand on the door. It was just a hand. No claws. I blinked several times.

“Sorry,” Fang whispered. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Trying to be quiet.”

I sat down abruptly on my bed, my heart pounding. “You okay?” Fang soundlessly shut the door and came to sit next to me. “You look like you saw a ghost.” I shook my head, speechless for a second.

“How come you’re awake?” Fang whispered, taking my hand in his own non-paw.

I shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. I feel like something’s sneaking up on us. Watching us.”

“You think Dr. G-H knows where we are?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He warned me – he said no wasn’t my final answer. I keep feeling like he’s coming after us, that he’ll keep asking me to join forces with him until he forces me to say yes.”

“Over my dead body,” Fang said, and I flinched.

“Not funny to use that phrase anymore, Fang,” I warned him, then continued. “I can’t stop thinking about Jeanne too. He’s clearly been experimenting on her. Which means he’s probably experimenting on everyone at that camp. And Chu is involved. I saw him gathering subjects in that first aid tent. It’s so totally Nazi-scary. For one thing, can you imagine an accidental outbreak of one of his ‘rare viruses’?”

“He could definitely do some damage,” Fang agreed.

“And that’s just for starters. People there are desperate, Fang – they’d agree to anything as long as there was a decent meal at the end of it. Lots of those kids are orphans. Who would miss them if something went wrong?”

“You think we should go back?” Fang asked.

“No!” I answered, a little too quickly. “I know; it’s pathetic. One day I’m Mother Teresa, and the next I’m all about me-me-me again. us, I mean.” Fang nodded. “The problem is, I don’t have the slightest idea how to help those people.” I sighed. “This guy is an evil genius. Most of the people we’ve dealt with are evil non-geniuses. I’m not sure how to handle him. He’s the kind of person who’s so brilliant, he probably could destroy the entire world.”

“So do we tell the CSM? The president? The New York Times?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I’ve been going back and forth on that all week. I can’t think about it anymore right now,” I said, suddenly feeling tired. “Hey, why’d you come in here, anyway?”

Fang’s too-long black hair fell over one eye. “Just checking on you. You’ve been getting wound tighter every day.”

“I guess I have. I just… don’t know what to do, and I feel like I don’t know enough about anything to figure out what to do.”

“It’ll come to you,” Fang said confidently. “For now, why don’t you try to get some sleep? I’ll stay till you’re out, if that’ll help.”

“That would help a lot,” I admitted.

I collapsed sideways on my bed and pulled the blanket over me. Fang sat at my side, holding my hand and rubbing my back between my wings.

20

FANG WAS RIGHT. It came to me. The next day I presented my plan to the flock.

“You want us to what?” Gazzy stared at me with horror.

“I want us to learn more,” I said. Plus, I needed a big project to focus on. “I’ve been thinking about this since Africa. We know some stuff – how to hack computers, break locks, et cetera. But I’ve realized there’s a lot we don’t know. And here we are, living peacefully in our new house, tons of time to spare, hours to fill up – so we should be putting that time to good use!”

“What do we need to learn?” asked Iggy.

“Oh, I don’t know… Like, why was Chad in such a mess? Why were the locals suspicious of Americans?” I paced up and down our living room. “And where did the Romans go, and how did they get replaced by Italians? I mean, the Greeks are still around!” I went on enthusiastically. “There’s so much to learn. It’s never bothered me till now – we always knew enough to get along. But now I’m thinking, How can we fight evil scientists without understanding science? How can we save the world if we hardly know anything about it?”

“We don’t have to know about something to save it,” Iggy argued. He had one foot on a window ledge, ready to jump out. “I mean, we know evil scientists really well, but we don’t want to save them.”

“Okay, that example doesn’t even make sense,” I said. “But, like, these CSM missions we’ve been on – we’ve relied on other people to tell us what we need to know. Mostly, we’ve been able to trust them. But what if they weren’t trustworthy? What if we knew enough to judge for ourselves? We could stay totally independent!”

Fang stroked his chin the way he did when he was thinking. Nudge was staring at me, and now she threw a couch pillow at my head. Only my lightning reflexes kept me from getting a face full of corduroy-covered foam.

“We’ve had so many chances to go to school!” she wailed. “But noooooo! You always hated school! You didn’t want us to learn stupid boring school stuff!”

“I still don’t like school,” I said. “But we can learn by ourselves. We can do field trips. Experiments. There are online courses. We have the computer.” I pointed to our super-duper contraband computer, lifted from the government some while back.

“I say no.” Iggy folded his arms and looked defiantly at a spot by my left ear.

“I say no too.” Gazzy folded his arms, imitating Iggy. Angel looked thoughtful but didn’t say anything.

“We need to do this, guys,” I said. “We’ll get bored if we just sit around all the time.”

“I’m happy to sit around all the time,” said Gazzy. “I don’t mind being bored.”

“Anyone who does not feel the need to deepen his or her font of knowledge is welcome to be on bathroom and kitchen duty for a month,” I said. “Are there any questions?” Eyes met mine with various expressions of anger, resentment, uncertainty, yada yada yada.

There were no questions.