| Plot Summary of Maximum Ride: School's Out -- Forever |
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"In the sequel to Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment, Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, Angel, and Total are still being hunted by Itex, a multi-million dollar company, that owns everything, but you'd never know it unless you look. Erasers (part human, part wolf) are hunting the children like dogs.
In this sequel, the flocks continue off from the institute to find their parents. But when Fang is gravely injured, they're forced to seek help from outside. And outside the flock, anyone could be an Eraser, anyone could be a cold-blooded killer out to capture the children.
The winged children, and Total, the dog, are taken into custody by the FBI. They're transported to a ranch in Virginia, to live with Anne, and FBI agent. They're enrolled in school, and have to keep their wings a secret at all times. When Max finds that Fang has a girlfriend, a perfectly normal girl, tension mounts. Fang finding the situation laughable.
Fang decodes some of the papers that the flock aquired in New York, and finds Iggys parents. It turns out a disappointment, when they use him for attention and monetary gain.
The voice in Max's head(courtesy of the chip in her arm) continues to cause her distress, telling her, that it's up to her to save the world. And discovers a new gift."
Cori, Resident Scholar
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"Six ‘recombinant' human-avian children, ages six to fourteen, are fleeing the lunatic fringe scientists that created them. They experience a brief respite from the Erasers, human-wolf recombinants that are the scientists' hit-men and their pursuers, after one of the two oldest children is badly beaten by chief Eraser Ari. Fourteen year old Fang is hospitalized, where FBI agents find the six children, who call themselves ‘the flock' and offer sanctuary to them in the farmhouse of agent Anne.
In Anne's home the flock; leader Max, second in command Fang, blind Iggy, Nudge, and six year olds Gassman and Angel experience normalcy for almost the first time in their lives. In the idyllic country setting they even uncover certain heretofore unknown abilities. All six children can fly but during their stay with the FBI agent Angel discovers she can talk to fish and further develops her ability to read minds and exercise mind control over others. A dog the children picked up at one of the underground genetic engineering labs is discovered to be able to talk. Life, even attending school, seems like it could not get better except for a school principal who seems to have it in for the children and glimpses of Erasers in the local town. Max even goes out on a date and receives a first kiss, yet she cannot escape her feelings of distrust of Anne and of lurking doom. She literally has a Voice inside her head that alternately councils and frustrates her, telling her that she must ‘save the world'.
Max's fears are realized when first Iggy's parents are found; one of the flocks' goals is to discover and reunite with their real families, and the flock must leave Iggy to a new life, then Max is attacked at school by the principal and a group of ‘teachers' who may or may not be Erasers. Max and the rest of the flock, including Iggy who rejoins after discovering his parents want to ‘sell' his story to the tabloids, only escape by flight and superior genetically enhanced strength. Returning to Anne's farmhouse they discover that Anne has indeed been in league with the Erasers and worst still with Max's former ‘father', the evil scientist creator Jeb Batchelder. The flock escapes after a second battle between Fang and Ari; Ari is also Jeb's ‘son' and pathologically jealous of Max – the only child that Jeb seems to care for.
The flock are on the run again and, somehow always located by the Erasers possibly via a chip implanted into Max, they seek out a corporation in Florida called Itex that Angel recalls the scientists discussing during her recent imprisonment by them. Max is captured by their pursuers and a Max-clone is left in her place. She is held captive at Itex, subjected to an isolation tank. Her flock meanwhile is lead by the Max-clone into Itex, ostensibly to discover what they can about the flocks' parentage and the meaning of Max's Voice's exhortation to save the world but in reality into a trap where all the members of the flock are to be terminated. In the climatic scene Max breaks out of the isolation tank, reunites with her flock and resumes life on the run towards an uncertain destiny.
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Eva Ulett, Resident Scholar
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