heat of flying washed away by this goddamn rain that kept getting in my eyes. I suddenly remembered celebrating Clete’s made-up birthday last year. It’d been almost cozy, and I’d stolen a whole cake from a bakery way down the Main Line, where they didn’t know me, wouldn’t watch me the second I walked in.
Everything had been so much simpler, then. I remember how I thought if I ever found my parents that everything would be okay. Not that I’d have one fly me directly into a lightning storm and yell at me while we attempted to jailbreak the other one.
Another bout of muscle-clenching shivering swept over me, and I thought, You know what? To hell with this! I’d never been quiet or obedient in my whole life! The Flock might do great, exciting things and play with death a lot, but that wasn’t exactly big news in my world. I’d been playing with death since I was left behind as a child, and the reason I survived wasn’t because someone was looking out for me. It was because I was calling the shots myself. It was time for Hawk to be Hawk.
“Look!” I said loudly, and four heads turned. “Either we’re going down or we’re not! We don’t have one stinking idea of the sitch down there or ‘all the factors involved in the moment, including stuff like storms’!” I used my nastiest voice when I quoted Fang, and instantly saw his face go flat with anger. Well, tough shit. I’ve been mad a few times in my life, too, and it hadn’t killed me yet.
“We’re in the middle of the freaking goddamn ocean, there’s a crazy freak show happening in the prison below us,” I shouted, “and I’m holding a goddamn bomb in a goddamn paper bag, and that paper bag is wet!”
To emphasize this, I jerked it out in front of me. The wet bag ripped, the bomb dropped out, and it fell like, well, like a bomb.
“Frick!” I hissed and started to dive after it, but Nudge grabbed my backpack.
“Stay up here!” she ordered.
“It might not explode,” Gazzy said, lying through his teeth. “I mean, it would need a detona—”
CRACK!
Lightning and thunder happened at the same instant, almost blowing my eardrums out, making every hair I had stand up straight.
Directly below us, one of the choppers exploded into a fireball, its pieces scattering like confetti. At the exact same instant, lightning hit the prison, blasting a hole in the heavy metal cage. There was another huge explosion, this one catching a second chopper in its wake, snapping off its rotors, making it spin downward in crazy circles. It hit the rocks of the prison island, its larger pieces sliding into the water, fuel bubbling up to burn on the surface.
The explosions barely reached us, though we felt the shockwave five kilometers up. It was the nearby lightning strike that had cooked our brains.
“Tha wa inshting,” Gazzy said, his words slurred. I could barely hear him, could barely remember to move my wings to stay in the air.
Dazed, I looked around at the others. Everyone’s hair was standing up, including Nudge’s tight curls. I felt like I might barf—my ears were ringing and my vision had a blue flash burn from the lightning. The rain pouring down on us felt really good right now but it also made our entire bodies into living conductors.
“What happened?” I said when I could speak.
“We almost got hit by lightning,” Fang said, looking pale and disheveled. “And your bomb hit a chopper right when the lightning did, so—”
“Everything go boom,” Iggy said. “But guys—Max is down there.”
“Well,” Fang said, eyeing me. “We didn’t have a plan, but you just created one hell of a distraction. Let’s hope it didn’t kill your mother.”
CHAPTER 70
“Max!” Fang cried, and tucked his wings back, face pointing downward. He went through the air like an arrow, dropping incredibly fast, like I’d seen Ridley do.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, trying to see through the billows of smoke being shot through by rain as he disappeared into them. I had just blown up like half the prison, two choppers, and who knew how many people—including Max. I might have just exploded Max. Who might be my mother. Who the Flock had looked for for ten years.
“Good one with the paper bags, Gaz,” Iggy said angrily, and shot downward after Fang.
“Oh, like I knew it was going to rain!” Gazzy yelled after him. He looked at me. “It wasn’t your