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Onceher neatly in the crosshairs, as if they could pin her to the sky The flock flew, perfectly spaced, in a large arc overhead, the one called Maxie males Then a smaller female Then a smaller male, and the smallest female after him

A little black object, not bird kid shaped, struggled to keep up Devin couldn't identify it—it hadn't been in his dossier The closest thing he could i or so, as unlikely as that was

But Max was the only one he was concerned with It was Max he was supposed to kill, Max whohts

Devin sighed and lowered his ar He loved the chase, the hunt, the split-second intersection of luck and skill that allowed him to exercise his perfection, his inability to miss

He looked down at what used to be his right hand One could get used to having no right hand It was surprisingly easy And it was so superior to have this lovely weapon instead

It wasn't as crude as sirafted to the stuant than that, so enuity This weapon was a part of hiered by als in the interface between his arm and the weapon

He was a living work of art Unlike the bird kids flying in traceable patterns overhead

Devin had seen the posters, the advertiseooder idiots at the Coalition to Stop the Madness had organized this whole thing, this air show, this demonstration of supposedly "evolved" humans

Wrong The bird kids were ill-conceived accidents He, Devin, was truly an evolved human

The CSM zealots asting their ti the bird kids to prohted thing to do Manipulating and taking advantage of lesser creatures in order to "save" even lesser creatures? It was a joke

A joke that could not be perpetrated without this flock of examples And the flock could not survive without its leader