“What do you think I mean?” asked Angel, her voice rising with hysteria. She felt clumsily for the sides of her cage. “I’m
25
FANG LEANED AGAINST the cold, rough tombstone.
It was twilight, and the sky above the graveyard was a pale indigo. The trees rustled with a slight breeze, but no birds sang, no crickets chirped. Fang was completely alone.
Blood trickled slowly from the wound on his wing, where the bone had cracked and punctured the skin as he’d flown up to catch Maya. At the time, he hadn’t even noticed the pain. It was pulsing dully now, and he was letting it bleed.
Pain from somewhere other than his heart was a welcome change.
He deserved the pain, Fang told himself. Everything was his fault.
If he had paid more attention in that battle with the henchgoons, if he had kept tabs on Maya the entire time, she wouldn’t have fought Ari in the air. She wouldn’t have died in Fang’s arms. She would still be alive today, warm and happy and Maxish and not Maxish, having his back when things got too real.
Fang stared up at the moon, only barely visible in the murky dusk. Things had gotten too real.
First Angel. Then Maya. Both innocent, both dead.
All his fault.
He was a murderer.
He let his head drop into his hands, and shut his eyes tight. At least Ratchet and Holden were okay now— without Fang and the danger that came with him, they’d be all right. Fang could not be trusted as a leader; that much was horribly obvious. How could he save the world if he couldn’t even protect the few people he loved?
Swallowing, Fang looked up, around the graveyard. Tombstone after tombstone, death after death, epitaph after epitaph, summing up a life, or a worldview, in a few words. What would his gravestone say, he wondered, assuming he wasn’t left to rot in the open air?
FANG: GREW UP IN A DOG CRATE. FELL IN LOVE. SCREWED IT UP. FAILED AT LIFE.
Wait a second. Something caught his eye.
Fang scrambled to his feet and crossed to the tombstone that read JULIE EVANS, 1955–2010 in two strides. He knelt before it, reaching out and tracing the epitaph.
YOU HAVEN’T FAILED UNTIL YOU QUIT TRYING.
A sign from the universe? Fang’s brain being so pathetic that it was making up coincidences?
Either way, he
Fang touched the engraved words one more time, then kicked off from the grass and soared into the darkening sky.
26
FANG STARED AT his warped, distorted reflection.
He was standing in Millennium Park, Chicago, in front of the huge stainless-steel sculpture nicknamed “The Bean.” Around his reflection curved the city skyline, clear blue sky and tall majestic buildings. This place was one of the many stops he’d made in the past few days. He was newly motivated, as if the words on the gravestone had injected him with pure determination.
Fang was trying to understand the 99% Plan.
His wing was still messed up, so he’d taken buses and trains—had even hitchhiked—all over the country, from South Florida, thick with gray fog, to the smooth golden plains of Oklahoma. He had seen the vivid colors of the Arizona sunset. He had watched small waves lap the shores of Lake Erie.
Every place he had visited had held rumors and evidence. All over America, people were stirring restlessly in anticipation. You could feel the energy in the air, building to the breaking point. It was like the calm before the storm.
But this was not a storm of revolution, like so many others in history. This was a darker, more violent storm —twisted, raging. It was a storm of desolation.
There had been dozens of demonstrations, some of which turned into senseless riots. Celebrities were updating their Twitter profiles en masse, writing things like “Earth is mine, 1 more for 99.” Slack-jawed Plan members were milling around outside hospital maternity wards wearing sheets scrawled with such slogans as LESS IS MORE. END REPRODUCTION NOW. The brutal stoning of a homeless amputee (“the Plan does not allow for the weak”) was just one example of the escalating violence.
There were large meetings in every city, held in universities and government buildings, in which “rational” lectures were led by smiling, serenely confident “experts,” discussing the benefits of “selection.” All of which, to Fang’s utter disgust, the news outlets covered with a mix of excited panic and restrained approval.
That is, to exterminate the human race.
Fang shook his head in revulsion, still unable to comprehend it. The same crazies from the past had somehow become
But the American people were actually going along with it.
Fang’s fists clenched as he thought of all of the places he’d seen, the millions of people struggling through their individual lives, their loves….
All that beauty.
All that history.
And all these people, so eager to destroy it.
Book Two
AND SO
IT BEGINS
27
ANGEL HEARD JEB’S breath catch in horror.
“They didn’t,” he said hollowly. “Not you, too. Not your eyes.”
“You’re just upset because you wrecked your perfect little specimen,” Angel spat, shoving away his hands and retreating farther into her dog crate. She still ached all over.
Jeb clutched the door of the cage, shuddering so hard that he rattled the metal grid. “Oh, Angel…”
“Save it.”
“It’s like Ari all over again,” he said brokenly. “So many failures… so many mistakes. You can’t imagine the remorse I feel, Angel….”
“I was such a bad father to him,” continued Jeb dejectedly.
Angel bristled. Ari had been a disaster, that was for sure, but he was dead. Angel was the one who was here;
And he wouldn’t shut up. “After Ari died, I just… I had to try again. I had to give myself another chance at being a father, at caring for a son. That’s why I worked so closely with Dr. Gunther-Hagen.”
