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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 1 year

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Maximum Ride AU?

[This has elements of When the Wind Blows as well as Maximum Ride, because I know the original book a little better.]

• They look like six kids right now. Six fun-loving kids out for a good time in the California fall, enjoying loaded fries and hot wings while crammed around a table at the sidewalk café. They stand out, to be sure — they all have multicolored dye in their hair, Marco’s sporting a mohawk, Ax wears those wraparound sunglasses despite the cloudy day, and of course there are the bulky windbreakers slung over all their shoulders. But they only stand out enough to get a second glance, not a third.

Don’t give them a third look. They’ll notice, and you’ll be the one who regrets it.

Still, though, they look... If not normal, then normal enough. Normal-adjacent.

• Of all the workers in the Sharing Institute, Dr. Aftran was always kind to them. She was the one who let them into the outdoor enclosure even when they hadn’t earned yard privileges, the one who snuck candy bars into their cell, who “forgot” to turn off the television when their TV hour was over more often than not. She was kind, and that was all she was... until Ax’s bidirectional vision implants didn’t take, until he came out as a null result.

Null results get put to sleep.

Dr. Aftran injected him, exactly on schedule, and his unseeing eyes fluttered shut even as he fought hard against the drugs. But when he woke up, it was outside underneath an open sky. And the rest of his flock was around.

They never do find out what happened to Dr. Aftran. Maybe it’s better that way.

• The sidewalk café fills, empties, fills again around them as the afternoon passes, but no one kicks them out. Their waitress initially shows interest in Ax — everyone always does. But it’s Marco who finally catches her attention on purpose, whispering back and forth, scribbling something on a napkin that causes her to blush and lean in close.

Jake watches. He glances at Cassie. She glances back.

Ax doesn’t see their glance, of course, but he can pick up on the currents of the conversation just fine. His knee bumps Cassie’s, a silent question, and she taps his arm once in confirmation. Ax sighs.

It’s been like this, more and more lately. Marco spending time with outsiders, turning away from the rest of his team. Chafing at the need to go everywhere with five other kids his age in tow.

Too freakin bad. They go together. For Ax. For themselves. They go together, or not at all.

• Evening creeps up on them, and by now the café chairs are being flipped up onto fresh-wiped tabletops. This is as long as they ever stay anywhere, so they’re full and content when they stretch to go. Without discussion, they’re assembled at the lip of the canyon. It’s nice to use this kind of natural formation — the dropoff makes it easy to get up speed — and Jake is just thinking how nice it will be to get going again, when...

“Where’s Marco?” Tobias’s voice is tight.

Rachel groans. “This time, I really am going to kill him.”

They’re all modified: Rachel for strength, Tobias for skill, Jake for speed. Marco for his lightning-fast calculation, Cassie for her ability to move underwater. Ax’s modification didn’t take, but he’s scary smart all on his own.

So really, there’s no question of who will be chasing Marco down. Especially not in that narrow canyon.

“Be back in a minute,” Jake says, and jumps off the cliff.

• Black-and-white wings, ten feet from primary to primary, unfurl from Jake’s back. He’s not as beautiful as Ax, his pinstriped underwing and blue-gray back no match for that angel-white black-tipped plumage. He’s nowhere near as large as Rachel, who once knocked a grown man clear through a wall with a sweep of her enormous brown wings. But he can do this: rocket through a canyon at over 150 miles an hour, banking into turns so tight they’d kill any of the others who tried, trusting he can adjust in time even as the walls brush within inches of his feathers. Luke Skywalker in the trench of the Death Star, Tobias often jokes while watching him.

Catching up to Marco is easy.

Getting him to talk is a whole other ball game.

They’ve been sitting there for a good fifteen minutes — fifteen minutes they can’t afford, not with half the Sharing Institute hunting them across the state — before Marco finally swipes a hand across his face, clears his throat, and finds something to say.

“Warren Worthington the Third,” Marco confesses at last, staring not at Jake but at the vireos hunting the canyon far below. “That’s the name I gave her, when she asked. Warren Worthington, and the phone number of a Domino’s pizzeria. Only my name’s not Warren Worthington, is it.”

“Marco,” Jake says, trying to forestall the inevitable. “Your name is Marco.”

“Marco,” he spits, “is something you call me. My identity is Subject 1273-MRO, and my code name, the name my mother put on my birth certificate, is Icarus. Fucking Icarus. Because she knew I’d never, ever be able to eat at a café or flirt with a girl or have a life at all. So it didn’t matter if she gave me the stupid fucking name of a guy legendary for how much he sucks at flying.”

“I know,” Jake says heavily. “I know.”

“You don’t.” Marco’s voice cracks. “If you ever feel like giving up on the rest of us, you can always go find your normal-ass mom and dad and brother in their normal-ass house and...” He spreads out his arms. “Surprise, guys! I didn’t kick it at birth. Thanks for naming me Jake, and not Uriel or Vajrakila or Tinkerbell.”

Jake doesn’t answer, because Marco’s not wrong. They know from the Sharing Institute files that Marco and Ax stole that Jake’s parents were all told they’d be signing up for an experimental drug trial during pregnancy. That they’d agreed to be impregnated with genetically modified embryos. That on the day of delivery, the doctor had been heartbroken to say newborn Jake had died in the incubator. That the Sharing would very much like to keep the remains for study, and was terribly sorry for their loss.

“Marco,” Jake says. An affirmation. “Marco. I know you guys decided I should be the leader or whatever, but I’m just a dumb scared kid like you. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I don’t know if we’re ever going to find someone we can trust.”

“Yeah,” he whispers. “No kidding.”

“But Marco... I know I’m sticking with you guys no matter what.” Jake shifts around, forcing eye contact. “I know that. Those people, they’re not my family. That’s you guys. We fly together, and I know that.”

Marco stands. They haven’t solved any of it, not really. This is all going to happen again. They’re still freaks, still hunted. But he nods, resolute. “We fly together.”

And they leap as one.

• They find Tobias’s birth mom, from the stolen records. She claims she doesn’t remember any of it. Doesn’t remember being pregnant, doesn’t remember giving birth, doesn’t remember who might have knocked her up or when. She says this all to their faces, not hesitating, not looking away. There are scars on her forehead, scars on her scalp. She doesn’t remember having a son, she says, she’s terribly sorry but she doesn’t remember.

• Jake dreams. The voice doesn’t give itself a name, but it always tells him the same thing: he’s meant to save the world.

• David was their tagalong, their unwanted but tolerated kid sibling, their friend. He could be annoying, and he never seemed to realize just how different his life was from theirs — he went home every night to a warm bed, he had a mom and dad, he had food that wasn’t protein mush. But he went through the tests, the endurance exercises and the injections, right alongside them. And his insider knowledge of the Sharing Institute saved their lives, on more than one occasion.

So when the creature — every bit as freakish as them, but with none of their grace and with joints that move hampered by pain — steps from the shadows and into the light, Cassie gasps sharply against the threat of tears.

David was supposed to be an entirely separate project. He’s programmed with regenerative cells, has a life expectancy of over 400 years... and yet here he is, creeping forward on swollen knees that are powered by straining lungs.

“We have to go,” Jake says, when Tobias takes an involuntary step toward their former friend. “We have to go now. If he found us, then the Sharing’s not far behind—”

David lunges, mouth open, unnaturally long teeth aimed at Tobias’s throat. Rachel body-slams him on intercept, the two of them rolling in a mess of feathers and blood across the filthy ground.

“Go!” Jake points to the sky. Tobias takes off, whistling to guide Ax, and a second later Marco follows.

Jake grabs a fur-covered arm. David’s wrist twists the way no human’s would, and he sinks claws into Jake’s skin. Jake cries out in pain, but he slams his head forward into David’s face. Jagged teeth tear open Jake’s cheek, his forehead, but David recoils from the blow.

Rachel rolls loose. With overhuman strength she stomps down onto his stomach, until David jackknifes around her with an oof of pain. She raises her foot again, but Jake catches her arm.

“We go!” he shouts. “Together. NOW.”

Whether it’s the sight of his bloodied face, or the sounds of the others hovering and desperately whistling for them to join, Rachel shakes the bloodlust. She beats hard against the air, helping Jake to rise with her much larger wings.

Down below, Sharing agents are streaming across the ground. Most of them are armed with rifles and tranq guns, but the man who dives forward to pull David into his arms has no weapons at all. The flock takes off, and for now they get away.

• They find Cassie’s parents. Michelle and Walter are gentle and kind. They stitch the cuts on Jake’s face and Rachel’s arms. They ask questions, like are you okay and how long have you been on your own. They give the flock hot food, and soft beds, and something infinitely more precious that the kids all drink up like lizards in the sunshine. But Cassie looks out the window one night, and she sees a girl who is not a girl standing at the edge of the woods. They don’t stick around to find out if it is the Sharing, if David and his fellow trackers would settle for killing the horses or would murder the veterinarians too.

• Jake dreams. The voice tells him again to save the world. He replies, just as he always does: the voice can go fuck itself, because he’s only here for saving his friends.

• “Look,” Tobias says. “Look.”

There are hawks hunting along the cliffs below. They dive with sickening speed, pulling up short with crabs and trout in their claws.

They swoop and spin around each other, wheeling and screaming.

“We’ll scare them away if we get any closer,” Rachel points out.

“So don’t get closer.” Tobias perches so close to the edge of the cliff he threatens to tip over, relaxed and unafraid. Happy, or as close as he ever gets. “Just watch, and learn.”

• He scares the hell out of them, when he drops out of the sky the following evening. Cassie screams in shock, but he’s back before any of them can get too scared. He’s holding an ice cream cone he just stole clear out of some guy’s hand, seagull-style.

“What?” Tobias says, laughing, making a mess. “I was just hunting. It’s what birds do, right? We hunt!”

Later Tobias shows Rachel what do to: wheeling close, wheeling far. For a time they rocket along toward the ground, synchronous and breathless, wings half-tucked. Then they split, and shoot apart, and wheel around again. Courtship, the ornithologists call it, and there’s an ecstasy in the dance that no human can touch.

• They find Jake’s family. It’s a temporary measure, they tell each other, they tell themselves. It’s temporary. But it’s better than a cave above a sea cliff, better than a tent in the woods. It beats nesting in an unused clocktower or a moldy steeple.

Jake’s parents and brother are nice. They’re conventional. They’re upright and intelligent and suburban. They sit the flock down in the living room, and they sip tea and make concerned faces and try to determine just how not normal their newfound son is.

There’s an uncertainty there, a hint of hesitation that Michelle and Walter didn’t show. But Jake’s family is comfortable, is middle-class and law-abiding.

• So law-abiding, in fact, that Jake wakes up the following morning to a room full of Sharing agents and a rifle in his face.

If he had to guess, it was his brother who called 911. One the cops who answered thought to contact the FBI. Some FBI agent knew to call the Sharing, and to tell them to retrieve their lost property from the Berenson residence of suburban Carmel.

“RACHEL!” Jake screams.

She knows what to do. There’s a crash from below, his parents’ picture window exploding out onto their lawn. Three figures shoot toward the sky — Rachel’s enormous brown wings, Marco’s brown-and-white striped ones, and Ax’s angelic pinfeathers. Rachel has blood limning the tops of both wings, Marco’s clutching Ax’s wrist in his hand, and they’re away. They’re away.

There’s no sign of Cassie or Tobias, but Rachel and Marco and Ax are clear.

Jake watches them go, hope tugging his heart toward the sky, even as the needle jams into his neck and the black drugs suck him down.

• Jake awakens in a dog crate. Size medium. Suited for dogs 90 to 120 pounds. His wings are pressed against his sides with cramping force, his body twisted in a fetal position he won’t be able to uncurl from. Ask him how he knows. Better yet: don’t.

• “Marco?” Cassie says, sucking in a breath and coughing, the instant she’s awake. “Rachel? Anyone?” She rolls, feathers scraping painfully on the sides of the cage, until she’s sitting on her knees with both hands pressed on the ground. She can’t stay like this forever or her feet will fall asleep, but there’s a fundamental comfort to be had in hugging her own wings around herself.

“Cassie,” Jake says, quiet and dull, from somewhere to her left. “Cassie.”

“Jake. Who... Who else?”

“I see Tobias across the way,” Jake says. “I think it’s just us.”

Cassie closes her eyes. Thank goodness. They’re probably going to die here, the three of them, and there’s going to be a lot of horribleness in between now and then. But at least Ax is safe, at least Marco and Rachel are free.

“Ax is okay,” Jake says, thoughts following the same path as her own.

It could be better. Tobias tolerates crating the worst of any of them. No one planned for Jake to sprout to six-one and over two hundred pounds during puberty when they mass-ordered cages this size. She’s probably never going to fly again. Nor are Tobias and Jake.

But it could be worse as well. Null results get put to sleep.

• They all hear it when Tobias wakes a little later. There’s silence, and then there’s the sound of thrashing so violent that the whole row of cages shakes. Tobias is breathing in soft hoarse cries, shoving wings and knees and wrists against the bars with bone-breaking force.

“Tobias!” Cassie calls. “Tobias, it’s okay, you have to calm down or —”

He’s making small desperate noises between gasps for air. There’s a sickening thud as his head impacts the ceiling of the cage. All six of them are claustrophobic — it’s the whole reason the Sharing ordered these cages — but it always hits Tobias worse to be confined.

“You have so many relationships in this life,” Jake says in rhythm. “Only one or two will last,” and it takes Cassie a second to realize he’s singing. “You go through all the pain and strife, then you turn your back and they’re gone so fast...”

Tobias has quieted, panting, listening. Jake’s no great talent, and his voice is too low to do the song justice, but it’s something.

“Oh, so hold on the ones who really care,” Cassie sings now, joining in with Jake. “In the end they'll be the only ones there.” It helps her to sing as well, she realizes. Forces her to breathe in rhythm, gives her something to focus on. “And when you get old and start losing your hair, can you tell me who will still care?” she and Jake sing together, and it must be working because Jake’s getting louder and Tobias is getting quieter. “Can you tell me who will still care?”

And then there’s a third voice — not Tobias, not the white coats — that joins them for the chorus. “Mmmbop, ba duba dop, Ba du bop, ba duba dop...” they harmonize, off-rhythm but singing hard enough not to care.

“David,” Jake says quietly, in the pause before the second verse.

“Hi.” He speaks just as softly. He’s in the cage directly above Cassie’s, out of sight through the opaque floor. He sounds bad, hoarse and wheezing almost as hard as Tobias was a minute ago.

“David?” Cassie asks.

He answers the question she didn’t put words to. “What do you think? The new modifications didn’t take. Obviously. I’m a null result.”

She thinks back to his swollen joints, his awkward gait, the teeth that didn’t fit into his mouth and the bone claws that split the ends of his hands. Seeing them with new light now, beyond the horror of what his own family had done to him.

“David,” Cassie whispers helplessly.

“I should have come with you,” David says.

Cassie flinches. They never asked him. They figured he was better off here, and so when Aftran got Ax and Ax got Jake and Jake got the rest of them, they’d left David behind. He’d known they were going to take any chance they could to get out, and he’d always warned them against it when the conversation had turned that way. They’d thought, they’d thought...

“Your mom and dad were here,” Jake says. “And anyway it doesn’t matter now.”

“They can’t!” Cassie blurts. “They can’t, they can’t.” It’s David. He’s supposed to live forever; that’s why he was made.

“Plant a seed,” David sings, with desperate force. “Plant a flower, plant a rose...”

“You can plant any one of those,” and now it’s Tobias joining in, then Jake, “Keep planting to find out which one grows.”

Cassie sucks in a breath through tears. “It’s a secret no one knows,” she sings, because what else can they do, “It’s a secret no one knooooows.”

• The door slides open, sometime after they enter their second rendition of the song. Marco’s mom stands on the other side. Lab coat on. Syringe in hand. “I hear you’re awake,” she says.

“Can you tell me who will still care?” they sing, ignoring her. “Tell me who will still care—”

“Stop it!” she snaps. “All of you, stop it immediately.”

Jake lifts his head, red grid from the bars imprinted into his cheek. “If you didn’t want us singing, shouldn’t have made us into birds,” he says flatly.

She draws in a breath, but they launch back in, louder and louder: “Can you tell me? No, no you can’t ‘cause you don’t know. Can you tell me? No, no you can’t cause you don’t know. CAN YOU TELL ME? NO YOU CAN’T CAUSE YOU DON’T—”

Zzzzzztt-BAM!

The cages are electrified. Would’ve been nice to know sooner, Cassie thinks as she clenches her fists and her jaw until the tremors wear off.

“Enough!” Marco’s mom shouts. She twists the lock on David’s cage and wrenches open the door.

“No,” David moans, “no, no, please, I want my dad—”

He’s still uncoordinated from the shock; Marco’s mom easily drags him out by the hair and throws him to the floor.

“Don’t do this!” Jake shouts. “He’s a person. This is murder.”

Marco’s mom lifts her head, brushing hair out of her face. “He’s a failed pet project of Mr. Visser’s, and it’s high time we eliminated him.”

“Please,” David screams. “Please, I want to see my dad, please!”

“This won’t even hurt.” Her tone suggests she has no idea what David has to complain about. “You’ll be unconscious long before cardiac arrest sets in.”

David struggles for everything he’s worth, but the needle is large and unforgivingly sharp. Marco’s mom slams it into his chest, not seeming to care where it lands, and depresses the syringe until it is empty. She tosses it aside, breathing hard, watching David closely.

“Can you tell me,” Cassie sings, a thready whisper, barely there, “which flower’s going to grow? No you can’t, ‘cause you don’t know.”

David is crying, already fighting for air with more than just exertion, but his eyes lock on hers.

“Can you tell me,” Tobias sings with her, that same tiny thread of sound, “If it’s going to be a daisy or a rose? You say you can...”

David’s eyes slide shut. His lungs empty, and they don’t refill.

• Tobias does his best to lose reality, after the white coats drag David out of the room. He tries to retreat into the memory of flying through caves with Ax and Marco, their whistles bouncing off the walls to map the space none of them could see. He should be more like those hawks, who slam the ground when they miss a strike but recover in seconds. He should be more like the pigeons who get by with two toes and one working wing, still surviving just fine. He should be like the mallards who never tire or slow, even after months’ worth of twelve-hour days. Instead, he’s a fucking parakeet: ripping out his own feathers, unable to stop no matter how hard he bites down on his own fingers to punish himself for punishing himself.

“They have to feed us eventually,” Jake says with confidence. “They have to give us water and space.”

“A bathroom would be nice too,” Cassie mutters.

“Exactly,” Jake says, hearty as a camp counselor. “Exactly. They’re going to let us out pretty soon now, you’ll see.”

Tobias would like to punch Jake’s fucking teeth in.

• There’s a scree of metal on metal, somewhere in the depths of the facility. Jake tries to lift his head to look, but gets no response from his neck muscles. He lost feeling in his lower legs a while ago.

There’s a thud, quiet like it’s far away but powerful enough to rattle the room they’re sitting in. The next thud is closer, louder, and this time the cage bounces off the floor.

WHAM.

That’s directly on the other side of the door. Another WHAM, and the door visibly dents inward on its frame.

“Guys, be ready,” Jake says.

“To do what?” Tobias asks sourly. But at least he’s talking.

WHAM.

The door crumples off its hinges. Rachel stands on the other side, a firefighter-issue battering ram in her hands. It has to be 200 pounds, but with all their enhancements it’s no real surprise to see her holding it easily.

“Step aside!” an unfamiliar voice calls from behind Rachel. “Please, step aside. The more footage we can get —”

Rachel moves out of the way, but goes into the room. She stops long enough to press her fingertips against Cassie’s through the gaps in the cage door, but only for a second before she focuses on Tobias. His fingers are bloody, his left wing as well, but he’s coherent enough to whisper her name.

The man who pushes into the room just after Rachel is a lot harder to explain. He’s middle-aged, but has the kind of blue eyes and tall frame that suggest he used to be beautiful. The strangest thing about him isn’t the makeup he wears or the way there’s something naggingly familiar about his face; it’s the industrial-size video camera perched on his right shoulder. He points it around the room, pausing to zoom in first on Tobias and then Cassie.

Ax shoves into the room after the man, Marco brushing wingtips with him. “Jake?” he says, lifting his head to listen. “Tobias? Cassie?”

“We’re okay,” Cassie says. “We’re here.”

“Shit,” Marco whispers. He’s peering through the door of Jake’s cage, lips pressed together. “Shit, man, you are too damn tall. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“‘S what I have you for,” Jake says.

Marco fumbles at the lock on the door. Luckily they’re simple mechanical things, not requiring keys but only the leverage that comes from being outside. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, we’re getting out of here, I’m doing a guest appearance on Touched by an Angel, and we’re headlining for Leno. Yeah?”

The door pops open, and Jake is sliding out from the sheer force of where his body had pressed against it. Some combination of the shock and the dehydration and all the blood in his body deciding to rearrange itself at once gets to him. The world goes black.

• Jake wakes up what feels like an eternity later. He’s propped sitting up, his back against the row of cages, and there are several unfamiliar adults talking over his head.

Before he can go into flight-or-flight mode, Rachel crouches in front of him. She’s peering close into his eyes, holding out an object that — once he finally figures out how to focus on it — proves to be a juice box with a picture of an apple on the outside.

“Take it,” Rachel says. “Cassie already had like six and didn’t keel over, so it’s probably fine.”

Jake takes it, sucking gratefully at the tiny straw. He looks over her shoulder at the guy who came in with them, and the three other people who are now filming that guy as he talks into a microphone. “Who...?”

“Kept finding parents.” Rachel jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “Finally hit on a useful one, go figure.”

“Hello, Jake.” The man crouches next to Rachel, holding out his hand. “I’m Dan Berenson. It’s an honor to meet you, son. Nephew.”

Jake stares at the hand. “Who do you work for?”

“NBC,” Dan says. “National Broadcasting Comp—”

“What are you doing here?” Jake’s being rude. He doesn’t care that he’s being rude.

“We’re doing an exposé on the Sharing Institute.” Dan gestures to the people behind him, presumably coworkers. “It’s a very important project.”

“I brought helicopters from two other news stations while I was at it,” Rachel says. “Just to be on the safe side. One’s technically the Weather Channel, but whatever.”

The thought of her simply flying at the nearest two helicopters with cameras until they followed her is almost enough to make Jake laugh, in spite of it all. He knows why she didn’t trust NBC alone — far too many companies and government orgs are in the Sharing’s pocket — but it’s a typically Rachel approach.

And here he’d thought Marco was joking about being on TV.

“C’mon.” Rachel hooks a hand under Jake’s arm, helping to haul him to his feet. “The others are outside.”

He shifts, tangling his feathers with hers, as they walk together. She gets a wing around him and yanks him close, a few inches shorter than he is but still with that unmatched wingspan. He lets her shove their shoulders together, bullying her way into his space, and doesn’t comment on how much her hands are shaking.

“Check this out!” Marco spreads arms and wings when he sees them, taking in the vans and helicopters and dozens of camera operators on foot. “That’s what I call a media circus, baby!”

“No,” Tobias is telling a woman with a paramedic’s uniform. “No, I’m not going anywhere without my flock. You take us all, or none of us.”

Lab coats are fleeing, Jake knows, taking what they can and running for it. Ordinary Sharing staff members as well. Any incriminating experiments the reporters don’t find in time will be put to sleep.

But it’s something. It’s the whole world watching, from those hovering machines to Rachel’s dad with the handheld camera.

“He said it,” Rachel announces, chin lifted. “We fly together, or not at all.” She’s smiling, tears in her eyes.

Jake finds his gaze drifting past her. There’s still smoke coming from the crematorium, dispersing slowly into the sky.

• Jake dreams. There’s still work to be done, the voice says, and for the first time Jake thinks yeah, okay.

#animorphs #maximum ride #animorphs ficlet #animorphs au #long post #crossover #character death #self-harm #child abuse #dehumanization #medical abuse #hanson #it's james patterson y'all #and it's k.a. applegate #this was always gonna be dark as fuck

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