Max

34

I LEANED OVER the instructor, looking anxiously at his face. “You okay? Sorry. Didn’t mean to slam you against the wall that hard. Nose not broken? Good.”

The guy in the white karate gi, his black belt marked with eight level lines, was still trying to catch his breath. He’d already tried jackknifing to his feet, only to slide slowly sideways as his brain realized that his lungs didn’t have any oxygen in them.

We stood around waiting, along with the rest of the class, which now stared at us as if we were freaks. Oh, wait – that was because we are.

So far in this class, there had been ten minutes of watching the instructor chop, flip, throw, kick, and punch just about everyone in the room. He’d ignored us until I’d stepped right in front of him, ready to take my turn in line.

“You can just watch for now,” he’d said briskly.

I shook my head. “Let’s get it over with.”

So he’d explained what he was going to do and how I should block it or evade it, but I was already thinking about lunch and didn’t really pay attention. Then he’d come at me, and I dodged to one side, under his arm, then kicked his knee out from in back, making him sag.

He started to spin, but I gave him a two-handed chop on the shoulder, trying not to break his collarbone, then jumped and did a spi

He looked a little better now, wheezing slightly and sitting up.

“I told ol’ Palmer that we had a pretty good handle on this, but I guess he didn’t believe me,” I said apologetically.

His eyes narrowed as he slowly stood up, a good six inches taller than me, and I’m five-eight. He probably outweighed me by about a hundred and forty pounds. “That was a fluke,” he said. “I was going easy on you because you’re a kid. But if you want a fight, I can fight.”

I guess this gets filed in the bulging folder of Max’s Nongirliness, but my heart gave a little jump. I’d been worried about getting soft, losing my razor-sharp survival instincts. And what do you know, this nice navy guy was volunteering to help me brush up on them.

“Yeah?” I said, trying not to look too excited. Behind me, I heard Fang snort, saw Gazzy and Iggy start to calculate odds and exchange money.

“Don’t hurt him too bad, Max,” said Angel, smothering a grin as fury crossed the instructor’s face. He rolled his shoulders, walked about ten paces away, and cracked his knuckles. The other students looked nervous and backed away from us, edging toward the door.

He stared at me with cold, cut-me-no-slack determination, then got into a fighting stance, holding one hand out, beckoning me.

“I saw that movie too!” I said. “It was like the coolest movie of all -”

He launched himself at me.

That was when his day really went downhill.

It didn’t last that long – maybe four minutes. Which can feel like a long time when someone’s whaling on you. Not to malign the U.S. Navy or anything, but he didn’t land a single blow. Maybe he was having an off day. Finally, we resumed our earlier position: me leaning over him as he gasped on the floor.

“It’s not your fault,” I said, not even breathing hard. “I’m genetically enhanced. And, you know, ruthless. Plus, of course, meaner than a rabid wolverine. Are you okay?”

After a long pause, he nodded silently.

I jerked a thumb at the rest of the flock. “Do you want to try it against any of them?”

Everyone except Fang failed at not looking hopeful. The guy shook his head no.

“Good choice. Then how about you give us a checkmark saying we passed the self-defense part of the BS? Okay?”

He nodded again.

I looked at the others. “Is it lunchtime yet? I’m starving.”

Iggy felt his watch. “It’s a little past nine. In the morning,” he clarified.

I groaned. “Okay, let’s find some vending machines. I need, like, about a million Twinkies.”

It looked like we might be finished by four, after all.

35

Q: You’re presented with a smooth-faced, eight-foot-high wooden wall. Your objective? Get over it. To, like, save comrades or something. How to accomplish this?

A: Take a ru

BKA (bird-kid answer): Or, you could just, like, fly over it.

Q: Twenty yards of dirt to crawl across on your belly. The catch? Rows and rows of barbed wire, strung eighteen inches off the ground. How do you get across without being snagged?

A: Do the “sniper” crawl. Be sure not to raise your butt or shoulders or head too high. Ouch.

BKA: What can I say? We’ve been crawling like rats and slithering like snakes for years. How else to sneak up on each other, hiding beneath the bed frame to grab Iggy’s ankle when he gets up for a drink of water? Plus, we’re really thin. If we keep our wings tucked in tight, no worries.

Q: Is there anything a bird kid can’t do?

A: No. Apparently not.

BKA: Well, we still totally fall down in the table-ma

Rope swings over quicksand, wading through rivers while holding weapons above our heads, balancing on spi

Explaining that we’d been designed to be strong, fast, and light didn’t really cheer them up. They just saw us kids beating the socks off them. We were barely panting when our classmates were bent over at the knees, throwing up from exertion. Heights don’t bother us. (Duh.) We’ve already been in awful, to-the-death fights. We’ve already been chained in dungeons. Locked in dog crates and experimented on. We’ve crawled through miles of air-conditioning ducts. Been pushed to our extreme limits physically, psychologically, emotionally. All of this BS training was just kind of a picnic after that.

Is that what Jeb had meant when he said everything that we’ve gone through was just a way to train me for the future? I would so hate for him to be right.

“This is fun!” Gazzy exclaimed, shoveling down the food at lunchtime. “That obstacle course reminded me of that time when we were jacking the car from the chop shop, remember? And we had to climb through all those piles of car parts without making a sound? Pass the ketchup.”

I pushed the ketchup his way.

“I gotta hand it to the navy,” said Iggy. “They know how to keep the chow coming.” He got up to get fourths, easily threading his way through the tables and the crowd, picking up a fresh tray and starting again at the begi

“Okay, are we done yet?” I asked Fang. “It’s almost one o’clock. My mom has been tied up on a sub for almost two days! Every minute counts here!”

“We’ve gotten through self-defense, the obstacle course, and outdoor survival,” said Fang. “We’ve still got weapons use. We’ll probably be done by five or so.”

“What’s next?” Angel asked, starting on her third hamburger.

Fang checked our list. “Covert ops.”

Angel smiled.