WHEN THE FUSELAGE hit the ground and exploded, I saw my future right below me, just seconds away. My wings were burning, as I gulped air, my muscles shaking from the strain of keeping us both aloft. We were going to land hard—and soon.
“Max!” my mom cried, looking down in horror. For her, Jeb was almost out of sight, dropping to earth like an unaerodynamic rock. Unfortunately for me, because of my raptor vision, I could still make out his terrified expression with utter clarity.
“Gazzy couldn’t hold—” I started to say, but then something big dropped past me, actually brushing my feathers and bumping my feet. It was Dylan shooting down to Jeb.
“Go!” I shouted to Gazzy. “Help Angel!”
Gazzy angled his body in a tight arc that brought him close to the others with just a few strokes. He braced himself under Nudge, taking half her weight—possibly reducing her speed enough to keep her from imploding when she hit the ground. Angel focused on guiding Iggy down for what she hoped would be a less-than-fatal landing.
“When we get there, land on your feet, then fall sideways,” I told my mom.
Ordinarily, I do a running landing. I can also do a hover-type landing, which involves dropping down from the sky into a standing position. (Kids, don’t try that at home—you’ll pop your knees.) This time, I rolled sideways, way too close to the ground for comfort, to let my mom slide off me. She landed much harder than I expected and then didn’t move. Meanwhile, I tripped and plunged headlong, somersaulting a couple times and coming to a stop on my hands and knees like an amateur.
Right behind me, Dylan and Jeb did about the same. They were still alive, which was all we could really hope for at this point.
About twenty yards away, the ungainly mass of Nudge, Iggy, Angel, and Gazzy finally landed hard, sliding through the red Arizona dirt, then tumbling head over heels, ingesting mouthfuls of sand. Considering that I’d been sure Gazzy would end up being a big Rorschach blot on the ground, I thought they did real well.
I crawled over to my mom. “Mom? Are you okay?”
Gingerly she rolled over onto her back, shading her eyes from the blazing Arizona sun. “Well, actually, I think my arm’s broken,” she said. My eyes flew to the arm pinned beneath her. It was bent at an unnatural, nauseating angle. I gently reached for her other hand, her face ashen, her mouth tight with pain.
“And my leg,” Jeb said, grimacing.
“Nudge?” I said. “Iggy?”
“Bleeding,” Iggy said faintly. “Don’t think I can move my wings anymore.”
“Me neither,” said Nudge, sounding like she was trying not to cry.
“I’m fine,” Dylan offered. Then I caught sight of the other side of his face. It was caked with dust and pebbles, blood still oozing, and his lip was split.
“Okay. We need help,” I admitted.
Not something you’ll hear from me every day.
18
WE’RE NOT FANS of regular hospitals. “We can patch everyone up at my office, do x-rays, put on casts,” my mom said. That way, we didn’t have to worry about explaining the whole wing situation or the fact that we have bird-type blood—
I unclipped my cell phone from my belt and handed it to her so she could place a rescue call to her colleagues.
Nudge and Iggy were still bleeding as we waited for help from my mom’s office to arrive. I pushed Nudge’s hair back from her dusty, scraped face, still shaky from how close to the end we had all come. Gazzy was exhausted, with pulled muscles and banged-up hands and knees. My chest and back muscles ached, and that sliced tip of my wing was sore—but just a little bit. I’d gotten off easy.
“So… no one saw what happened to the good doctor?” I asked.
Everyone shook their heads no. I turned to Dylan.
“And where were you, newbie? Why didn’t you jump out of the plane right after Jeb? Was Dr. Hans still in the plane when you jumped?”
Dylan grimaced and nodded. He walked stiffly as if in pain, but everything seemed to be functioning. His face and lip were already scabbing up, since he’d been engineered with the ability to heal himself. “The plane spiraled back and headed into
