If there was a reason so many people I cared about had died, if none of us was safe, could I really keep looking away? Didn’t I owe it to them to hunt down the truth?

“Rizal says we shouldn’t go looking for trouble,” Jonny had said, and that was pretty much what I’d told the flock yesterday.

But if I lived by that rule, would I really be Maximum Ride?

32

“NUDGE, WAKE UP.”

I didn’t know why I was whispering. There were rows and rows of beds built into the coral wall, but Nudge’s and mine were the only two that were occupied. I guessed the lampreys had pretty much decimated the Aquatics. What was Rizal thinking?

Total was lying on the floor—since Akila died, he’d been uncharacteristically quiet, spending time on his own, lying around a lot. I knew he was grieving, and I wished I could do more for him.

Looking at the empty beds, I could still feel some lingering sense of the kids who should’ve been here, the mutants and humans who had believed they were safe. I wondered if Ella had slept in any of these bunks.

“Come on, Nudgelet, let’s go,” I said more loudly, and shook her shoulder.

“Go?” Nudge mumbled, sinking deeper into the sponge mattress.

“Yeah,” I said. “We should be gone before the Fish Sticks return from the morning hunt.”

Nudge propped herself up on her elbows, alert now. “You wanna leave? Why?”

“Uh… because we’re in mutant-eating-lamprey-infested waters? Did you see how everyone shrugged off Jonny’s death yesterday? Rizal is just another crazy leader in a long, long line of crazy leaders we’ve dealt with. Do you really need another reason? We can’t stay here.”

Nudge blinked at me, her eyes round with alarm and already brimming. “What do you mean we can’t stay?”

From the ground near the door, Total raised his furry eyebrows at me, but he didn’t say anything.

Nudge, on the other hand, was incredulous. “You wanted this! The flock split up, everyone left us because you wanted to come back to this island!”

“I know. But that was before…”

Before I knew my family was really dead.

Before I heard Jonny’s theories.

Before it seemed like someone could be held accountable.

“That was before we knew the vaccine was wiped out in the tsunami,” I said. “Now there’s no reason for us to stay. I mean, don’t you want to know what happened? Don’t you want some answers?”