I'm not dead, just busy. And extremely cold. The new Slayers chapter will be up soonish, it's just hard to write. I mean, Artemis Fowl is making a large cameo and I've forgotten how to write his entire character.

But this is an new one in the Silence Series about Max II.

To quote the Joker:

Here…

We…

Go…

BOOM.

DISCLAIMER: Not Jimmy Patt. If I was, there'd be a visit to Australia for the Flock in the new book.

Thread for Thread.

or, alternatively, Lendheim.

Sometimes I want a name.

A proper one, not the one I have now.

Sure, no one else is called Max II, but honestly.

It's the fact that it's so individual that sucks most. You know. My…original, I think that's the right word….the Real Max, is so selfless and well, she's got guts.

I was created to think as Maximum but you can't fake the stuff she's been through. She was infinitely superior in her well, originality.

I grew up in the Californian School, in an apartment with everything I wanted. It was a routine, training, training to be Maximum. I got visited by Ari every Tuesday at three for four years. Maximum and her Flock grew up in dog crates.

She was always experimented on, I was always training,

training,

training,

always being coached on how to be the Incredible, Invincible Maximum Ride.

The Doctors never saw me as a person, they always saw me as an experiment.

I was the backup plan.

I wasn't the better version.

I wasn't nearly as important as Maximum, but without me they would lose their trump card.

I would have to change my appearance almost daily. Rip out those feathers, dye that strand of hair, cut that bit of my arm open. You know, for the seashell incident.

And after I'd tried and failed to fulfil my duty, I was taken to Germany. I tried to escape, I really did.

The Doctors had always taught me that looking like Maximum was the most important thing. If we'd spent more time on how she thought and the way she acted, I might not have been figured out.

When Maximum showed up in Lendheim, it gave me hope, in a weird, screwy way.

Maximum Ride, the Maximum Ride, knowing I was related to her. Again, related to her in a weird, screwy way.

But we were connected by the strongest things I could imagine, double helixes. The threads of our DNA were exactly the same. Knowing that was enough.

I didn't want to die in Germany, alone. I wanted to live, preferably not in Germany. I wanted to go back to the U.S. and live in my little apartment and be visited by Ari on Tuesdays and…

All I wanted to do was not die. That is, live. Escape Lendheim and live.

I wasn't going to die at Lendheim.

Just before the match between Omega and Maximum, I gathered the small group of allies I had and we tried to escape during the battle.

They were all killed and I was nearly recaptured.

I lost it then. I was going to die, everything was for nothing. I was nothing, I was nothing, I wasn't Max, I wasn't anything. I was…dead.

Someone grabbed me and started running. Instinct. I didn't want my arm pulled out of its socket – supermutants have no idea of their strength.

I escaped Lendheim. I escaped Lendheim with him, the last of the mutants.

The Pinnacle of Genetic Engineering.

Omega.

We ran into the forest of Lendheim and lived. The first thing I hadn't been ordered to do in my life was to run into the forest with the one who wanted to kill me. Well, a version of me.

Not a better version.

Just a different version.

Thanks for reading. Kudos to anyone who's written a fic where people call Max by her full name. It's a bitch to type out over and over and over again.

To exit, press review. This new format is great, innit?

-Nicola.