Fang

I have to give myself credit for that one. Most grownups wouldn’t have even bothered to try to wade through that crap, but I managed to pick up on two key points.

First: Autoantibodies set your immune system against you and attack the body’s own organs like they’re the bad guys. Second: Abnormal cell growth, too much cell growth, badly “programmed” cell growth = party invitation to cancer. Great.

I started clicking through the pages of the PDF faster now, to get to the pictures. And then, when I did, I wondered why I’d been so eager to see them.

Our grisly tour of Dr. Hans Gunther-Hagen’s Gallery of Mistakes took at least two hours.

We saw people with purple eyelids and grotesquely bulging eyes the size of baseballs, people with glands in their necks so swollen it looked as if there were an alien creature growing inside them. Others had muscles so inflamed their bodies ballooned and twisted into shapes I didn’t think possible. The skin disorders were maybe the worst for me to look at. Rashing and cracking and bleeding and virtual disintegration so wildly extreme that I had to stand up and walk away from the computer at one point.

This was only what was happening on the surface of these victims. I’d read enough to understand the bottom line: toxic disaster. Chronic pain, even agony, not to mention the psychological effects of dealing with it.

“There’s more. The regeneration stuff,” Fang said, and I nodded. It was a horror show, but I had to go deeper, and deeper still. Page after page, image after image, document after document.

I can’t even write down the details of what I saw on the screen that day. It would bring back too many nightmarish visions of festering wounds, partial and deformed limbs, and horrific tumors of all shapes and sizes.

“I just knew it,” I said in a low voice. “I knew he would stop at nothing to accelerate his research on humans.”

What we would call mistakes, Dr. G called progress.

26

IT WAS HOURS later when Iggy jolted us out of Dr. Hans’s Fun House.

“What’ve you guys been doing all this time? Online poker? You sure are… into it.”

“Playing a video game,” Fang answered, hiding the document on the computer desktop. Even though the other kids had seen a lot of freaky stuff in their lives, it was still our instinct to protect them from anything that might overload their quota of nightmares.

“You’re lying through your fangs,” Iggy accused.

Fang tried to play i

“That reminds me,” Angel called over to us from the couch. “I have a video for you, Max!”

She skipped to her bedroom and brought out a backpack that she turned upside down. Out dropped a clogged travel-size hairbrush, an iPod Shuffle, and a CD in a linty transparent sleeve.

“I found it in my bag a few days after we got back from Africa. It has your name on it, but I don’t know how it got there – I swear.”

I didn’t have a good feeling about this, but curiosity got the better of me and I popped the CD into the computer right away. I’d drill Angel later about why she “forgot” to give it to me until now.

When I clicked “play,” my not-good feeling got much, much less good.

My favorite finger-chopping foe smiled at me from the screen.

“Hello, Max,” Dr. Gunther-Hagen began. I braced myself, as Fang stood behind me with his comforting hands on my shoulders.

You ran out a bit quickly today, and I was so excited to be demonstrating my work that I never had the opportunity to give you some of the more important reasons why I know you would find it very rewarding to work with me.

As I’m certain was apparent from what you saw and learned of my limb-regeneration project, I am the world’s leading expert on stem cell research, bar none. Growing an organ in a dish and implanting it is rather an elementary process for me and my team compared to limb regeneration. In fact, I’ve been successfully implanting organs grown from subjects’ own tissue for a number of years. Were you to join forces with me, doors would open up for you and your flock.

He paused dramatically.

“For example, wouldn’t one of your boys love” – he reached to his side and slid a cloudy jar into view of the camera – “a brand-new pair of these?”

He picked up the container so the camera could focus on it.

Floating inside was a human eyeball.

27

THE NEXT MORNING I SET the kids to working on independent studies, and I did more computer research about genetic-recombination theory and stem cell science. I knew they had incredible potential to help humankind. But what became clear to me was that the doctor was experimenting way too fast on humans. All my research had done was upset me.

So now I was emerging from a long shower that was supposed to be therapeutic. I started dragging a comb through my brown hair, getting caught in snarls. Really and truly stuck. I got lost in the ritual of trying to untangle the tangles – contemplating Dr. Hans and Iggy and the possibility of new, healthy eyes for one of the people I loved most in the world – as the moisture on the mirror slowly began to dissipate.

That’s when I spotted an Eraser in the mirror, looking out at me through the fog.

Reactions were faster than thought, and I whirled, one fist raised to strike… an empty wall. A fast look showed that unless the Eraser was paper thin and stuck to my back, there was no one in here but me.

I sat on the edge of the tub, heart pounding.

This had happened once before, ages ago. I’d looked in the mirror and seen an Eraser version of Max looking back at me. But Erasers didn’t even exist anymore – they’d all been “retired.” I peeped up over the edge of the mirror. The steam had cleared, and I saw my human face, my brown eyes.

What was happening to me?

28

SWEARING UNDER MY BREATH, I searched the bathroom, opening cupboards, feeling under the sink. I examined every inch of every wall and ran my fingers around the window frame. If there was a camera hidden in there, I didn’t find it.

A tap on the door made me jump like a deer.

“Yeah?”

“It’s me.”

I unlocked the door and let Fang in. Gri

I let out a breath. “Nothing.”

“Then why is a comb stuck in your hair?”

Crap. I slowly pulled it out, trying to get through the worst of the tangles.

From down the hall, I heard raised voices and a crash, and I tensed.

“The kids are taking a little break,” Fang said.

“But everything’s okay out there?” I tried to sound casual.

He shrugged. “I think they’re getting cabin fever.” He stepped forward and put his hands around my waist. “But enough about them,” he said, and his voice sent chills – good ones – down my spine.

I wanted to forget about everything and escape into Fang’s kiss. Don’t think, just feel.

“Where’s Max?” I heard Gazzy say out in the hall, and Iggy responded.

“Wherever Fang is, of course.” They laughed.

I pulled away from Fang. Even this was being ruined.

“They’re okay,” said Fang, bending his head again.

A second later I nearly jumped out of my skin, though. “Oh, Fang, you’re so haaandsooome,” I heard. It sounded like me – standing right next to me.

That was Gazzy, doing one of his absolutely perfect impersonations. He also had a gift for throwing his voice.

“Max! Let me take you away from all this! My darling!” If I hadn’t been holding Fang – and also hadn’t known that he would never say something that corny – I would have sworn it was him. Cackling laughter.

Fang and I leaned our foreheads against each other.