“Our goal is to bring everyone to the One Light.” She had one of the sweetest voices Fang had ever heard, but her eyes were what drew him in. “It’s an invitation for change. We plan to take control for the betterment of the earth.”
“Take control?” Sofia Tabernilla asked, but she was smiling serenely at her. Beth nodded, smiling back.
“Think of it as an earth cleanse. It will be beautiful. Follow us. Follow us and be free.” She looked directly into the camera, and Fang was mesmerized. The group would save him. Beth would save him. She would help him forget all the harsh—
Star clicked the remote, and the theme song for Project Runway made Fang jump.
His head was buzzing. He felt happy and calm. He felt like everything was going to be beautiful. He shook his head.
Something was seriously wrong.
A group that had sprung up out of nowhere and already had international coverage? Talking about cleansing the earth and taking control? The Doomsday Group set off every antennae of alarm Fang had.
A quick online search for the Doomsday Group revealed surprisingly little, as if it had sprung up suddenly, fully formed. There was no mention of it at all two months earlier, but clearly its members already numbered in the thousands.
Fang sat back. He had his mission.
Someone had to figure out what the Doomsday Group was up to and just how bad it was. It was time for Fang to step up and be a leader, the way Max always had.
A familiar ache filled his heart, and he promptly squelched it. No time for that now. He had too much to do. She wasn’t the only one with a mission to save the world.
Now it was just a question of who would save it first.
21
“I’M NOT SEEING anything,” Dylan said a good twenty minutes later. “I mean, I see the wires. I see where we all hit the ground. The plane’s sheared-off wings are over there, all in pieces. I can even see the plane’s door that ripped off. But what I don’t see is—”
“Hans. Or the plane’s fuselage,” I interrupted.
“You read my mind again!” said Dylan, and I glared at him.
“No, it’s just the obvious huge missing thing. I have a brain. I can think.”
“I know that,” Dylan said mildly. “I was just teasing.”
Now I felt like a clod. I rolled my shoulders to release some tension. “So where do you think it is?” I am highly skilled at changing the subject as demonstrated here.
“It was already smoking and spiraling by the time I got out,” he said. “I didn’t think it would get far at all.”
“We should check under the cloud of balloon-type things,” I said, and Dylan nodded as he started a wide, smooth, arcing turn.
“Show me how to fly sideways,” he called over his shoulder. “That was cool.”
“The hawks taught us that,” I said. “Basically, you roll and point one wing down. Then keep flapping. You’ll keep moving forward, even though it feels weird.”
Dylan tried it. The first couple of times he looked a little clumsy, but when we reached the wires of death, he was flipping sideways like a pro, powerful and smooth. His learning curve was really amazing.
“Man, each tiny wire has four sides, like a four-sided razor,” he said as we carefully started flying through the wires.
“You can see that?” I asked.
“Yeah. I can see really far, really close, and sometimes right through stuff.” He turned back to grin at me, and I wondered what kind of things he could see right through.
“I guess you’re the improved version of me,” I said coolly. “I have great vision but not like that. I mean, I can see the school building way down there but not the four sides of the wires.”
He smiled at me. “Everyone has strengths and weaknesses,” he said with irritating modesty. So far, I had seen only strengths and no weaknesses from him. But I wasn’t about to say that.
“I’m not seeing squat, other than the school,” I reported. “And we already knew that was there. Let’s broaden our search area.”
“Good idea,” said Dylan, and ten seconds later we were out of those awful wires and in the open blue sky.
I breathed deeply, enjoying the sun on my face. For several minutes we flew in silence, hearing just the sounds of our wings and the occasional bird. After a while of finding no Hans remnants, I said, “Let’s check out the school anyway.”
Dylan said the exact same thing at the exact same time. Again.
22
“I THOUGHT THIS Doomsday stuff was, like, urgent,” Star said. “Who’s this girl we’re waiting for?” Star was devouring another hot dog from room service, her third, while Kate looked on, repulsed.
“And how come all we’re getting is chicks?” Ratchet asked Fang. “Not that I’m complaining.” He lifted his sunglasses to peer at Kate.
“Nobody says ‘chick’ anymore.” Kate rolled her eyes.
Ratchet grinned at her, his bright smile lighting his face. “Okay, I hear you.” He turned back to Fang. “How come all we’re getting is babes?”
“She’s just someone I know from a while ago,” Fang said in a controlled voice from behind his computer. “And there’s another guy on the way too, Ratchet. He’s the last one. They both should be here soon. For now, I guess we just chill.”
Not five minutes later, Star’s angry voice made Fang look up. She was standing over Ratchet, who was sprawled across one of the double beds. “I was watching that! You can’t just change the channel!”
“There’s a game on,” Ratchet said. “You watch your little show in the other room.”
“The TV’s broken in there,” Star snapped. “How can you even see it with those stupid sunglasses on or hear it through those headphones, anyway? Give me the remote.”
Ratchet shrugged, looking bored, and turned the volume down even lower.
“Listen, street punk,” Star snarled, her angry face close to his. “You’re a guy, and you’re a couple inches taller, and maybe forty pounds heavier, and ooh, you’re in a gang. But I’ve survived ten years of Catholic school, and I will cut you off at the knees without a blink. Do you understand?” She snatched the remote from his hand and in a millisecond was halfway down the hall.
“Your daddy pay for that attitude?” Ratchet called after her.
Everything happened fast after that. Before Fang could even ask what was going on, Star had zipped back into the room like a bullet, but Ratchet’s hypersenses had tipped him off, and he was ready for her. But before either of them could make contact, Kate had both of Star’s hands clamped in one of hers and her left knee firmly on Ratchet’s chest, pinning him hard to the floor.
“I said I don’t like violence,” she said quietly. “Maybe you two should cool off.”
Ratchet grinned up at her goofily. “Kate the Great.” He wheezed. “I think I’m in love.”
“Guys, guys,” Fang said, raising his voice until they all looked at him. “Kate’s right. Maybe you should check your egos. We’re all really different. Don’t you realize that that’s exactly why I picked you, out of everyone who applied on the blog? For example, what might defeat Ratchet might not defeat Star.”
Star smirked, and Fang cleared his throat. He hated talking so much—he’d never known that all the talking Max did was necessary, as a leader. He’d been realizing a lot of things about Max lately.
“That means that it’ll be tough for us to work together as a group, but you need to suck it up, try to get along, and treat each other with respect. If you don’t feel like you can do that, then leave now, no hard feelings.” Fang felt their surprise. He looked into each of their faces, but no one stepped forward.