Hawk - James Patterson Page 0,68

the city down. The rushing air made it hard to look up, and when I tried I couldn’t see the Flock. We all have amazing eyesight, but I doubted they could pick me out against the ocean from nine kilometers up.

Almost a whole other minute passed. I managed to turn so I was falling face first. Below me I saw waves, blue-green ripples. Something jumped out of the water! Several somethings! Really big, smooth, shiny, jumping in arcs. Some kind of fish. I bet Nudge knew what they were.

In the City of the Dead they farmed fish in huge tanks. These were wild fish. I hoped I didn’t kill too many when I disintegrated against the water.

The ocean smelled salty. If I reached out, I could almost touch it. I guessed I had about three seconds left. I closed my eyes.

Something like a freight train hit me sideways. It took several seconds to realize I wasn’t wet. I wasn’t wet? I wasn’t dead?? Opening my eyes, I looked up to see that Fang was carrying me in his arms. He’d come down and snatched me up at the last second before death. He’d seen me, caught me, and now was surging upward with powerful wing strokes. Before, because I was the only flier I knew, I’d prided myself on flying almost as good as Ridley. Now I knew that Fang and the Flock did fly as good as Ridley.

I hoped Ridley was okay and knew to wait for me. Or maybe she knew to get the hell out of there, which would be good, too.

“I need you to climb on my back,” Fang said, looking down at me. “I can carry you much longer on my back.”

It was hard to look tough when he’d just saved my life, but I tried anyway. “I don’t need you to carry me.”

“Yeah?”

Before I could answer with a hard Yeah, Fang dropped me. Just let go of me and let me fall.

Because I wasn’t ready, I was in the same position as before, where I couldn’t whip my wings out because the high speed of falling would probably snap the bones. I watched him become smaller very rapidly above me. He was grinning.

I gave him the finger and crossed my arms over my chest. When I dared to look up again, he was laughing.

Then he dive-bombed, the way I’d seen Ridley go after a rat. He came down amazingly fast and scooped me up.

“I need you to get on my back,” he began again.

So I did, because this flight was too far for me and he couldn’t carry me forever in his arms. But I didn’t have to be pleasant about it.

CHAPTER 66

Max

One has so much time to reflect, doesn’t one, when one is hanging upside down in a net? Especially when one has a puffed-up blowhard yapping at one incessantly. Every so often, McCallum would demand some answer to some stupid question. I was usually off in a daydr—daymare—and he had to repeat it several times.

After the second time, he had a guard use a taser on me (tied to a long pole—it was ridiculous). I had to point out that being tasered made speaking physically impossible for a while, and also tended to build up ill will. Was that what he wanted?

Then it was back to the yapping. Two and a half meters below me, the doctor looked sulky, the prison warden seemed about to have a heart attack, and the prisoners, who had stayed up the whole freaking night to watch this circus, had mostly fallen asleep in place.

I kept thinking about that amazing glitch in the news feed, and where the camera had been. Who had made that happen? Why? Had it helped anything, anywhere? Had it hurt? McCallum had definitely seemed upset by it, that was for sure. If they could get a camera that close to me, could they get like, a grilled cheese sandwich within reach?

All valid questions. If I ever met these people, I was definitely bringing up the question of the grilled cheese sandwich.

“Maximum…” The voice was silky, cajoling, and it slithered into my ear. “It’s pointless to keep fighting. You’re the last of your kind, and you should want us to pursue any means to make more of you.”

I kept my face blank, but inside it was like a cold hand had seized my heart and squeezed. What did he mean, last of my kind? The rest of the Flock was out there somewhere,