I bolted upright, staring at his face. His mouth opened. His good eye widened. I grabbed his hand in both of mine and clasped it hard against my chest. I couldn’t say anything, could only stare at that poor, battered face I loved so much.

Fang blinked hazily and breathed in again. His gaze fell on me, and I must have looked wild with panic and misery.

“Fang?” I gasped.

He blinked, tried to swallow. “ ‘Ssup?” he said groggily.

I’m pretty much of the stoical school of emotiveness, but everything I was feeling burst through me like a flood through a dam. I dropped my head back onto his chest, my arms around him, and sobbed.

Chapter 85

85

“LET ME GO! I command you!” I heard Dr. Gunther-Hagen shout. “Have you lost your mind? Have you forgotten who I am?” I looked around and saw Dylan, flecked with blood and sporting a black eye, grasping the doctor from behind. He was staring at the doctor with fury, even hatred.

“I think you’ve forgotten who I am,” Dylan countered. “That is, not a robot. Someone with a mind of his own.”

“But you — you owe me your life!” Dr. G-H stammered.

“I’m not sure I want this life,” Dylan said sadly. And he looked at me and Fang.

The doctor’s eyes got even wider as he became fully aware of Fang’s regained consciousness. “This doesn’t make sense!”

“You don’t make sense!” I bit out through my tears. “We’re not just test subjects! We’re not just for experimenting! You people never learn!”

“I see it all clearly now,” Dylan said in an oddly flat, quiet voice. “I see what you are. I see what you made me. And I see what I’ll become.” He looked over at another gurney a few yards away from him. “Iggy, can you help me with this? Grab his legs.”

Iggy and Dylan lifted the struggling doctor onto the gurney. “Gazzy, Nudge, Angel, you too. We need help strapping him down.”

I was dumbfounded as I watched my flock restrain this evil genius on a gurney. As had been done to us so many times in our lives.

But the next thing surprised me even more.

Dylan picked up another fully loaded giant hypo from the tray next to Fang’s bed. “This should do nicely.” He readied the needle like a trained nurse. It was obvious that he’d been raised on injections.

Dr. Gunther-Hagen craned his head to look around at his lab, now destroyed; his guards, now useless; his subject Fang, now saved. And his master creation, Dylan, who looked as though he wanted to kill him.

“That’s what I call giving someone a taste of their own medicine,” Gazzy whispered.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, Dylan,” the doctor said.