"No freaking duh. And uh, wait-let me guess-I'm some kind of bird-kid hybrid. And you captured me. And, and, I'm strapped to a hospital bed. I bet I even have wings. Am I right?"
"No. You don't understand," she went on briskly. "You're at the School, Max, because you never left it. Everything that you think you've experienced for the past five months has all been a dream."
41
I gazed at Anne in admiration. "Gosh," I said. "This is a totally new tack. I truly did not expect that." Looking around at the flock, I asked, "Did anyone expect that?" They warily shook their heads no.
I nodded at Anne. "You've got me. Good one."
"It's true," she said. "You know you're an experimental form of recombinant DNA. You know that you've undergone testing during your limited life span. Part of the experiment has been to test your brains' imaginative capabilities, as well as how accurately we can manipulate and even create your memories. There are various experimental drugs that we've been authorized to use, drugs that allow us to, in essence, give you life memories that you never truly experienced."
Why was she doing this? Why go to so much trouble to spin this story?
"Does it really feel like you lived in Colorado with Jeb? That Angel was kidnapped? That you got her back? That you went to New York? That you killed Ari? That you lived with me in Virginia?" Her eyebrows rose.
Narrowing my eyes, I stayed silent. I was aware that the rest of the flock was paying intense attention to her every word.
"Max, we gave you those memories. We monitored your heart and lung rates while you imagined yourself in violent fights. We decided on New York, on Florida, on Arizona. Remember Dr. Martinez and Ella? Those constructs allowed us to test your psychological and physical responses to a warm, nurturing environment."
My blood turned to icy slush in my veins. They knew about Ella and Dr. Martinez. How? Had they harmed them? Killed them?
I fought to keep my face impassive, to slow my panicked breathing. I couldn't let them see that they were getting to me. This was the worst yet.
"What was the memory of living with you supposed to test?" I snapped. "How I would react to a two-faced control freak who didn't have a maternal bone in her body?"
Two red splotches appeared on Anne's cheeks. Score one for Max.
"You still don't believe us, sweetheart," said Jeb.
"Yeah. 'Cause I'm not a lunatic." My voice sounded a little choked.
Jeb gently took my left wrist. Instinctively I tried to pull away from him, but I couldn't. He carefully turned my hand inside the Velcro strap, so the underside of my arm was facing up.
"Look, Max," he said very softly. "I'm telling you, none of it has been real. It was all a dream. You never left the School."
Remember that puckered red scar on my arm, from when I tried to cut the chip out myself? And then the surgery, just a few days ago? It had left clean, straight little lines, maybe half an inch long.
Jeb pushed back my sleeve so I could see farther up my arm.
There were no scars there. Not anywhere. My arm was smooth and unmarked. I tried to wiggle my fingers. They moved. There was nothing wrong with my left hand.
Next to me, Gazzy sucked in an astonished breath.
I tried not to breathe at all, tried not to swallow, tried to conceal my shock. Then something occurred to me: We'd gotten Total in New York. "What about Total?" I demanded triumphantly. "Was he a dream too?"
Jeb looked at me gently. "Yes, sweetheart. He was a dream too. There is no Total the talking dog."
He stepped aside so we could all see the bed across from us. It was empty. The sheets were smooth and taut and white. Total had never been there, had he?
42
Okay, color me way freaked. Either they were seriously messing with my mind or they were...even more seriously messing with my mind.
Very quickly, I ran through possible scenarios in my head:
1) They were lying (of course). a) Lying about us all having been in the School this whole time. b) Not lying about us all having been in the School this whole time.
2) This, even now, this second, was just another hallucination.
3) Everything up till now had in fact been drug-induced nightmares and dreams (an anorexically thin possibility).
4) Whether they were lying or no, whether this was a dream or no, I should just break loose, kick their sorry butts, and be done with it.
I lay back against my thin pillow. I glanced around at the flock. I had seen them age, seen them get taller, seen their hair grow. How could we have been tied up for years? Or had we been this big to begin with, been created this age?
I looked at Angel, wishing she would send me a reassuring thought. But nothing came from her at all. Oh, God.
I couldn't think anymore. I was hungry and in pain and trying to keep a steel lid on my rising panic. I closed my eyes and tried to take some steady breaths.
"How do you get some chow in this joint?" I finally asked.
"We'll get you something right now," Jeb said.
"Like, a last meal," said Angel in her little-girl voice.
My eyes opened.
"I'm sorry, Max," said Anne Walker. "But as you've probably figured out, we're shutting down all of our recombinant-DNA experiments. All of the lupine-human blends have been retired, and it's time to retire you too."
Which confirmed that we hadn't seen any real Erasers lately. Gazzy had explained about the Flyboy robot things.
"Retire as in kill?" I asked flatly. "Is that how you live with yourselves? By using euphemisms for death and murder?" I pretended to quote a newscast: "In today's news, seven people were 'retired' in a horrific accident on Highway Seventeen." I changed voices. "Jimmy, don't retire that bird with your shotgun." Then, "Please, sir, don't retire me! You can have my wallet!"
I gazed at Jeb and Anne, feeling cold rage turn my face into a mask. "How's that working out for you? Able to look at yourselves in a mirror? Able to sleep at night?"
"We'll get you something to eat," Anne said, and she walked quickly out of the room.
"Max-," Jeb began.
"Don't you even talk to me!" I spat. "Take your little traitor with you and get out of our death chamber!"
Angel's expression didn't change as she looked from me to Jeb. Jeb took her hand and sighed, and they both left the room. I was shaking with emotion and in a last surge, strained against the Velcro straps with all my superhuman strength.
Nothing.
I flopped back against the bed, tears forming in my eyes, hating to have the flock see me like this. I wiggled my left fingers and looked for the scars. Nothing.
"So, that went well," said Fang.
43
Okay, here's a knotty little question: If you're dreaming that you're tied up by mad scientists in a secret experimental facility, and then you fall asleep and start dreaming, are you really dreaming?
Which one is the dream?
Which one counts?
How can you tell?
I'd been torturing myself with these pointless circular conundrums all day. Which raises another question: If I'm torturing my own brain by trying to figure stuff out, does that still count as Them torturing me? Because they caused the whole situation to happen?
At any rate, at some point I must have "fallen asleep," because at some point, a hand shaking my shoulder made me streak back to "consciousness."
As always, I leaped into wakefulness on full alert, automatically trying to assume a battle position. Pretty much impossible when you're all strapped down.
I see perfectly in the dark, and it took only a split second to register the familiar hulking bad news leaning over my bed.
"Ari!" I whispered almost silently.
"Hi, Max," Ari said, and for the first time in a long time, he didn't look that mental. I mean, every time I'd seen this poor screwup in the last couple months, he'd looked more and more as if he were standing on the edge of insanity with one foot on a banana peel.