Luckily, the flock, at least, had dealt with these kids before. Nudge let out a terrifying battle cry and launched herself forward in a roundoff backflip, her feet catching two machete-wielding warriors midair. The rest of the troops followed, battling the Remedy’s child army in hand-to-hand combat.

Angel worked on breaking into the minds of the Doomsday fighters, but she knew from past experience that the cult mind was extremely difficult to crack into—the One Light had an incredibly powerful hold on them.

Still, she burrowed into their minds, hammering at the boundaries of their psyches, her head throbbing as she worked to free them before too many had to die. In a trancelike state herself, Angel was concentrating so hard on battling back the warped thoughts that she almost didn’t hear Dylan’s desperate cry.

“THE VENTS!” he was screaming at full volume now. “ANGEL, THE VENTS!”

As dozens of Horsemen burst up through unseen vents in the field, Angel shook in despair. These Horsemen were elite models, robots whose actions were completely controlled by the Remedy, so she couldn’t read their thoughts.

But she knew their power.

“Ratchet! Kate! Dylan!” she summoned them telepathically, her voice tinged with real fear for the first time. “Get to Max!”

Even if they didn’t win this battle, even if she couldn’t save these kids, Angel knew, as she’d always known, that Max was their only chance at saving the world.

81

THE GROUND UNDER me shook violently. Like everyone else on the front lines, I couldn’t see anything through the smoke, but it sounded like the world was breaking open.

Our whole army was bunched in a tight cluster in the center of the field. It was obvious we were in an extremely vulnerable position, but we had to hold back the ranks upon ranks of Doomsday psychos who kept pushing out of the entryway.

Right now, I was in a hair-pulling battle with a surprisingly vicious pigtailed eight-year-old and standing on an older boy’s windpipe as I tried to pry his fingers off his homemade scythe. I thought that was more important than worrying about an earthquake… until I realized it wasn’t an earthquake.

It was another army, shooting up out of holes in the ground all around us.

An army of M-Geeks.

At least that’s what I thought they were. They sure looked like the flying robots that had annoyed us since the days of Mr. Chu—right down to the weapons grafted onto their arms in place of hands.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT! came the sound of machine-gun fire.

The field became a tangle of chaos and panic. I knew how to fight these villains, though. I’d done it before.

Leaving behind the Doomsday kids I’d pinned, I shot into the air. I flew erratically, hearing the pop of bullets and trying to find a clear view of one of the robots.