sank to the ground, screaming and holding his arm.
I hit another guard with a hard palm strike to his nose, breaking it and shoving bone shards toward his brain. He, too, went down, but that one wasn’t moving. That made three in the last eight seconds.
“Maximum!” McCallum said, sounding like a father. “We all know you can fight! Stop this pointless display—you’re only making it worse for yourself.”
“Worse than having my wings cut off?” I snarled, spinning backward to punch a guard in the kidney. When he staggered a bit, I jumped up and snap-kicked his head sideways. He dropped. They just weren’t making guards like they used to.
Another snap kick to a guard’s left ear, and he fell to his knees, his stun gun skittering across the ground. I punched someone else right below his ribs, then clapped both of my hands over his ears as hard as I could, rupturing at least one eardrum. He yelled and dropped his stun gun, then fell against a concrete wall. I’d lost count, but there were only a few left.
“What—who are you?” one guard shouted, trying not to look afraid.
“I’m Maximum Ride, you son of a bitch!”
And a roundhouse kick to the side of his neck, disrupting nerves and blood flow to his carotid. He looked confused, then melted to the ground.
I felt the brush of a stun gun against my arm, so I whirled and slammed it out of the guard’s hand. “I think you use the pointy end,” I said, then punched him hard in the gut. When he folded, I grabbed his head and smashed it down on my raised right knee.
Then it was me and the remaining two guards. I saw one swallow nervously, obviously wishing he was armed with a regular gun or even a taser. The ground was littered with broken, bloody, or unconscious guards—the ones who had tried to get close enough to me to use their stuns.
“My legs are longer than your arms,” I pointed out, and he lunged toward me, gun out. I ducked and snap-kicked his knee, making it bend forcefully in the wrong direction. Moaning, he fell hard but still tried to swipe at me with his gun. I stomped on his wrist, breaking it, then kicked the gun away.
When I looked up, the last guard was disappearing through the hidden door.
That was when I felt the hard stick of a needle in my neck. I slammed it away, spinning to see the washed-out doctor, who had snuck up behind me.
The hypo flew against the wall, but the doctor didn’t look worried. His eyes gleamed with excitement. What had happened to the man who did his best to patch me up when I got hurt? The guy who had moaned over his lack of decent supplies? I looked hard into his eyes and found my answer. He was tripped out, for sure, fresh dope running through him like water. No wonder he was happy. No wonder he’d do anything they asked him to. I lunged for him, hands out to grab his skinny neck… but my arms were limp noodles, not obeying my command.
“Oh, fu—” I mumbled, and fell to the ground.
CHAPTER 38
For what felt like hours, my only objective was to open my eyes. But it was an impossible task, they were so heavy. And every time I got close, something told me it might be easier to just go back to sleep. That it might be easier to just give up. No, I argued with myself. No. Because of Fang. No. Because of Phoenix.
Trying with all my might, I resisted my own instinct to remain unaware. I was still locked in darkness. For who knows how long. Finally, I was able to swim upward toward consciousness, and I blearily opened my eyes just a slit.
I was in an… operating room. Super-bright lights shone down and I hazily saw people in doctors’ robes hurrying in and out of my line of vision. The walls had chipped paint peeling off their cinder blocks. So I was in a bad operating room. Probably the prison’s. Awesome. At least they’d taken me out of the courtyard. Apparently letting the prisoners watch me be operated on might make an example, but letting them see me take out ten guards all by myself might give them ideas.
Plus, I had the worst headache. Very carefully, I twitched one finger a tiny bit to see just how drugged I was. Bird-people have superfast metabolisms, so we