The Final Warning

“This is one thing you can’t control, Max,” said Fang. Angel was leaning sleepily against him, and he was stroking her hair.

Well, I just didn’t accept that.

“It’s been an honor serving with you,” Total intoned mournfully. I started to break in, but he held up a paw. “No, no, don’t stop me. Certain things must be said. I always swore I’d face death with dignity and honor.”

“No, you didn’t!” I exclaimed. “You always said you’d fight it tooth and nail! You said you’d go out kicking and screaming!”

Total frowned at me, then went on as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Life, like that first burst of color at dawn, is fleeting,” he said. “Ah, sweet life! What a short, strange trip it’s been! I’ve done,been, so much more than a typical dog.” He looked fondly atAkila. “Just like you, my beauty, my queen. You’ve served a nobler purpose.”

I found I had enough energy to roll my eyes.

“And now it’s come to this.” Total gestured to our tiny, ever-darker cave. “I had such dreams, such hopes! There’s a whole world out there…” He shook his head. “I always wanted to be an astronaut. Now I’ll never even get to try my wings.” In the dim light, I saw his tiny baby wings flutter slightly, and for some reason, I got a lump in my throat.

I blamed it on the hypothermia and near death.

“How many fine wines I haven’t tried.” Total sighed. “How many sights I haven’t seen. The Pyramids in Egypt. The Great Wall of China. The bo

“Please tell me the end is soon,” Fang muttered.

Suddenly I had a thought: air. We were sealed into this place. Had we used up all the oxygen? Was that why we were so dopey? I twisted around and punched my fist through the snow wall as hard as I could. My hand was so numb it was like I was using a stick. A gust of fresh, icy air blew in, and we all inhaled and blinked.

“Is the storm over?” Angel mumbled.

“No,” came a deep, odd voice from outside.

My eyes flew open wide, and so did Fang’s. Normally my body would have been instantly flooded with adrenaline and I’d have been in full-on fight mode, but this time I could barely react, barely raise my arm.

“The storm is just begi

59

THEY WERE GHOSTS, ice ghosts, my brain thought sluggishly.

Except ghosts couldn’t drag us out into the freezing air. Despite being half dead from hypothermia, Fang and I still had enough strength to immediately throw ourselves into the air, each of us holding one of Angel’s hands.

“Agh!” I cried, feeling a fine wire net smash against my face. The net whipped us down against the icy ground hard enough to make me lose my breath.

“Max!” Angel cried.

Pushing myself up on my numb hands, I searched frantically for a way out, at the same time trying to identify our attackers. The storm had lessened a bit, so I could see at least a couple feet in front of me. I blinked up through the mesh and saw that our captors were some kind of jazzed-up robots, kind of like short Flyboys with no wings. Only they hadn’t bothered making them look even halfway human.

We just couldn’t get a break.

Fury warmed my blood, and I tried to leap up, snarling, but the net only closed tighter around us, knocking me to the ground again.

I heard laughter, and spun my head this way and that to identify its source. The wind still howled in my ears, making it hard to tell where the laughter had come from.

One of the things was bigger than the others, who were only four feet tall or so.

“Do not hurt them,” he said in the deep, gravelly voice we’d first heard. “Remember, we must save them.”

“News flash,” I spat, trying to rise up again. “Your saving us is practically killing us! Let us up!”

He laughed again, but his face didn’t change expression, which was way creepy. I squinted, trying to get a better view. “Oh, jeez,” I muttered in disgust. Clearly they had gotten this guy from Frank-n-steins R Us. First off, he was enormous- maybe seven feet tall. And huge, broad and heavy. One arm was like an I beam: way too long, out of proportion with the rest of his body. I could barely make out metal spikes that seemed embedded in his flesh. Gross. He gave an impression of being chunked together from different alien species, and somehow it seemed even worse thanAri’s awful wings, sewn into his back.

“Not saving you from this storm, mutant,” he said. “Saving you for your later fate, we are.”

His voice was weirdly inflected and metallic, like an automated answering machine.

“Oh, good. Yoda captured us,” Fang whispered.

Something hauled the net up with us in it, and we dangled a foot off the ground. Fang was hyped, also trying hard to get out. Angel still lookedshocky and frozen, confused and scared. Total was struggling to right himself, andAkila couldn’t get on her feet, but she was growling.

“I amGozen,” said the bigger thing. “I do not want you to freeze to death. I want to watch you die later.”

“You need to get yourself a new hobby,” I snarled.

“It’s alwayssome thing,” Total muttered, still trying to get upright.

“Killing things is not a hobby,”Gozen said, sounding as though he would have smiled if he could. “It is my life. It is what I was created to do. I am able to kill things in many, many different ways.”

Gross,I thought. Someone had programmed him to feel pleasure about killing. I could hear it in his voice.

“We’re able to kill things in many different ways too,” I said, putting as much steel into my voice as I could, in case he was programmed to pick up on stuff like that. “We like breaking things, for instance.” I shifted my glance to one of the robot soldiers, deciding that if we all suddenly swung toward it, we could move the net enough for me to try to kick its head off.

“That is something we share,” saidGozen. Hisclawlike hand shot out before I could blink, and he grabbed Angel’s arm through the net. “Like this.”

We all heard the horrible, unmistakable sound of Angel’s bone snapping, accompanied by her barely suppressed shriek of pain. My heart leaped into my throat, and I chopped down onGozen’s hand as best I could. My hand bounced off his grip, and the rebound almost dislocated my shoulder.Way to go, Max. Chop down on solid metal.

Gozen released Angel, and I immediately grabbed her, drawing her to me and holding her against my chest, feeling her trying to stifle her cries. We were still swinging above the ground, and the mesh wasn’t stopping the freezing winds from tearing at our faces, our jackets.

“Move them,”Gozen directed.

Whatever was holding us started moving slowly across the ice. I felt as if I’d been cold forever, had been surrounded by screaming wind my whole life. Inside the swinging mesh, I looked at Fang’s eyes, the only dark things visible in the endless, swirling whiteness.

Wait,he seemed to say.Wait, and when we see a chance, we’ll take it.