The Final Warning

“You do not give orders,”Gozen said in his weird almost-human-but-not-quite voice. “You follow orders.”

I bit my lip so I wouldn’t tell him to go stuff his orders. Apparently he picked up on things like that.Gozen was unlike anything we’d come up against before. He was bigger, faster, human enough to be subtle but machine enough to have no conscience. I did think he was probably too heavy to fly, soyay for that.

I gathered my feet under me, refusing to wince. Keeping a sharp eye onGozen, I stood up cautiously, motioning the others behind my back to stay out of his range. Unless he could shoot bullets from his eyes, which I wasn’t putting past him.

“We are against global warming,”Gozen intoned.

Was that a statement or a question? Were we part of the “we”?

“Uh-huh,” I said carefully, backing away slowly. “That’s good.”

“Therefore we are violently opposed to your kind,”Gozen went on.

Not so good.

I quickly decided I believed in global warming. “But we’re against it too!” I said, keeping one wary eye on the Transformer-bots. “We were in Antarctica helping to stop global warming!”

“No. Humans created the problem. Humans are destroying the earth. You are destroying life.”

“Okay, now, see, you’re wrong here on a bunch of levels,” I said quickly. “First, we’re not even completely human! Did you miss the wings? I mean, jeez. Plus, as I just pointed out, we were trying to stop global warming! We’re totally against it!”

“Yeah!” saidGazzy. “We’re trying to save the world! It’s our mission!”

Gozenturned slowly, and my heart sped up when his gaze stopped onGazzy. I moved to put myself between them.

“You are part of the problem,”Gozen said with a machine’s horrible, inflexible logic that always turns out to be wrong because there’s something crucial missing from the formula. “I will enjoy your death.” With that, he turned and exited through the door at the front of the cargo area. I wished one of us- okay, me- had thought of trying to escape through that door whileGozen wasn’t looking.

Once the door was shut behind him and we heard the ominous click of the lock, Fang said, “That guy has no sense of humor.”

“No,” I agreed, sitting down gingerly to avoid hurting my ribs even more. “And I’ve thought of something else, much worse.”

“What?” asked Nudge.

“We have fourteen hours to go,” I said. “And I doubt we’re getting meal service or in-flight entertainment.”

63

OKAY, SO THEY KIDNAPPED us from Antarctica. Let’s review: extremely freezing, much ice, snow, wind, et cetera. Very little fresh fruit. No swimsuit season. No cable TV. No coffee shops.

Where did they bring usto?

Miami.

You’d think it would work the other way- snatchedaway from Miami, sentto Antarctica, which is like Siberia but with more penguins.

But no.

Just another example of the whimsy of the fantastically wealthy, powerful, and deluded. For us, it was like, Oh, please don’t snatch us away from Antarctica and send us to the playground of the rich and famous! Not that briar patch!

On the other hand: In Antarctica we were relatively free and doing actual meaningful work that we felt good about. In Miami we were prisoners. It was an ironic situation all around, no doubt about it.

I won’t bore you with the usual duct-taped hands and feet, bound wings, stuck into black body bags,yadayadayada, that we always go through in these ho-hum random abductions. It was like, same old, same old, and I could hardly work up the energy to fight hard enough to get more than a black eye and a sprained wrist out of it.

I guess I’m just getting jaded.

When they unzipped our bags and started ripping off the tape (tip: Don’t try that at home), we found we were high up in a tall, tall building. There were tons of other tall buildings around us. Below us was one of Florida’s white-sugar beaches, edged by water that I was dying to sink into. Or at least I’d want to after it stopped pouring. The sky was full of dark gray clouds. It was raining so hard I could hear the drops pelting the window glass likeBBs.

I was amazed they had let us loose in a room with windows, given our a

“These windows have been rated for hurricane-force winds of up to one hundred twenty miles per hour,” he intoned. “They do not open from the inside.” He stepped closer, then heaved himself sideways, shoulder first, into one of the big plate glass windows. We all winced, expecting him to go bye-bye with a huge crash, but instead he practically bounced off, the glass not even cracking, and I thought,Holy crap. Or, actually, much worse than holy crap, but let’s just say I thought holy crap.

“The auction will begin in one hour,”Gozen said. “Food will be provided.”

“You know, he’s really a people person,” I said when he’d left.

“What auction was he talking about?”Gazzy asked, and I shrugged.

“No clue,” I answered, starting to walk around. The double doors to the room were metal, windowless, and had several locking bolts. Our captors definitely thought we were hot stuff, and I felt kind of proud of our bad reputation. Proud but really trapped.

“Now what?” Angel was still wan and pale, with dark circles under her eyes. There were chairs around a table, and I helped her sit in one.

“Iggy?” I said. He came closer, and with his incredibly delicate touch, he skimmed his fingers over her arm. “Is there anything you can do?”

“It’s really swollen,” he said, and I used every bit of my self-control to not say, “No duh!”

“It feels like a clean break,”Iggy went on. “Let me see… So to speak.” Very tenderly, he manipulated her broken arm.

Though Angel’s face got a little green around the edges, she made hardly a sound. I held her shoulders and sent her comforting thoughts, and then we all heard a tiny scrape and a clicking sound, and Angel relaxed a bit.

“Oh, that feels better,” she said. “Still really bad, but less bad. Thanks,Iggy.”

Iggysmiled, proud that he could contribute to the flock this way. I ripped up the lining of my jacket- wouldn’t be needing that here!- and made a stiff bandage to hold her arm in place.

“Now what?”Gazzy repeated Angel’s question.

“Fan out, check the perimeter,” I ordered.

Which took less than five minutes.

Everyone reported that the room seemed rock solid. The vents were too small for a house cat, there was only the one set of doors, and we had all seen the window demonstration.

“Maybe I can…” Nudge murmured, and she crouched next to one of the doors. She moved her fingers close to the locks and closed her eyes. “If I could make the bolts all line up…”

“Oh, so smart, Nudge,” I breathed, coming to crouch next to her. “Can you feel them?”

“I think so,” she said. “If my magnetism could-ow!”

There was a harsh crackle, and Nudge was jolted backward almost a foot. The residual electricity practically made my hair stand on end. Nudge was on her back, rubbing her hands.

“The locks are booby-trapped,” she a

“My new skill was no help either,” said Angel.

“And since we’re not surrounded by snow, I’m still blind.”Iggy sounded bitter, but then he perked up. “On the other hand, this carpet is a tasteful ecru, with a thin ci

I glanced at Fang, who was totally visible against the walnut paneling of the room. He shrugged.

“So now I guess we wait,” I said. Which, you know, I’mso good at.