Fang and I led my mom to a room where the rest of the flock was under observation. The “agents” that Angel had hired had set up their private security guys outside the door — they didn’t want word of this leaking out. These kids were no longer marketable.

“Dr. Martinez!” Nudge said, managing a weak smile. Mom was good about not grimacing. Nudge’s skin looked like chocolate pudding bubbling in a pot on the stove. The rest looked like they had been dipped in a cauldron of lye. Doctors had swabbed the flock’s sores, taken blood, taken their temperatures — but hadn’t found squat.

“Oh, my gosh, Nudge,” my mom said gently. She smoothed some of Nudge’s corkscrew curls off her forehead, then went around and said hi to everyone else.

“I’m Dylan,” Dylan said when she paused by his bed, looking confused.

“He’s the latest, um, acquisition,” I explained weakly. Even with his messed-up skin, he still looked like he’d been designed by Gods R us. Except right now it was Trolls R us. But, like, a troll who would totally be a pinup in all the troll teen magazines.

“Hi, Dylan,” my mom said. “I’m Valencia Martinez, Max’s mom.”

Dylan’s puffy eyes widened. “You have a mother?” he asked me. “Wow. I had no idea. Do you have a father too, then?”

Bad, bad question. My mom quickly changed the subject. “You know, I read about a case where someone poisoned a spy with a radioactive element,” she said. “The pictures I saw kind of looked like this.”

“Oh, holy crap,” I said, putting my hand to my mouth.

“It’s not radiation poisoning,” said a voice.

“Jeb!” My mom went over and closed the door behind him.

“How do you know?” I demanded of Jeb. “Did you have something to do with this?”

“No,” said Jeb. He was wearing a hospital gown, open in the back, and I hoped he was enjoying the breeze. An IV dripped into his arm, and he had wheeled its little stand in with him. He looked pale and weak — after all, he had taken a bullet for us. Maybe I should be a tad less accusatory.

“No,” he repeated. “And I hope I’m wrong, but I think it’s an … accelerator of some kind. A genetic accelerator.”

“What the heck is that?” Gazzy asked.

Jeb paused. “Well … it’s something that would react with your genes. Basically introducing new mutations and speeding up mutations you already have. I think all of us got dosed, except maybe Max and Fang, because they were gone. But it’s having an effect only on you, whose DNA has already been modified.”

There was an appalled silence. I’d been gone for, like, two days, and in that time, everything had completely careened out of control.