Chapter One: One

Author's Note: This story takes place around when the Flock is still on the run, but after they take down Itex. Max, Iggy, Fang, and Glory are sixteen, Nudge is thirteen, Gazzy is ten, and Angel is eight (and sweet. I like her better as sweet little baby Angel). They all have all their powers that they get throughout the series. Max knows that Ari is her brother and all that. Iggy doesn't know his parents.

And please note that GLORY IS A DUDE. A GUY. MALE. This is important because Glory sounds like a girl's name, but this Glory is a guy. You will find out why he is called Glory soon.

Also this is my first fanfiction! If you don't like, don't read. Or, do read, and tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'm new to fanfiction, so don't freak out when I don't know every little detail about every little thing. Well, that's all that, a thumbs up and a smiley face! ..

Glory's POV

I landed a large expanse of dry, packed dirt and carefully tucked my grayish wings in through the slits cut into my long-sleeved t-shirt. I tied my windbreaker around my waist, covering the gun I'd stolen from an Eraser a couple days back. Not like I really needed a gun anyway.

I walked for a few hours until I found a forest and a small clearing within it. Starving, I wandered around for a bit, until I found a squirrel. All I had to do was touch its skin, because a bunch of sickos in a lab called the School once decided it would be great if a child could have wings and fly. "An advance in modern science" if a kid could touch the skin of any living creature and watch its skin melt away, watch it bleed out in agony.

I peeled one of my leather gloves off and snatched the squirrel from the tree with super-human reflexes. It stared up at me, terrified, as I began to move some of its fur over so that my finger touched its bare skin. Fear turned to unbearable pain as its skin and fur melted clean off. Then blood poured and poured and poured out of the small skinless body.

When the blood was gone, I went to take a bite, realizing just in time that I really shouldn't eat it raw. I tore some bark from a tree trunk to put the squirrel on, then quickly made a circle of rocks in the clearing to put leaves and sticks in. I fished a dying lighter out of a stolen backpack and watched it sputter to life. I held it to the leaves in my makeshift fire pit just in time for them to light before the lighter sputtered back out again. I'd have to find a new one soon.

After the squirrel was sufficiently cooked, I bit into the warm, juicy flesh, literally moaning with delight at my first meal in two days. I need a lot of calories, so I was truly surprised I hadn't collapsed from starvation yet. All the better, I guess.

I hunted some more until I had a small feast of rabbits and squirrels. By the time I had devoured all of the small woodland creatures, it was nearly dark. I drank what was left in my plastic water bottle, then went in search of more water, locating a nearby creek.

After filling my water bottle and drinking as much as I needed, I peeled my stained clothes off of my grubby body. I cleaned them the best I could in the flowing water, then draped them over tree branches. Lowering my naked body into the water, I scraped at layers of caked dirt, blood, and sweat.

I leaned back to submerge my grayish hair that matched my feathers into the water and ran my fingers through it, untangling knots and cleaning parts matted by blood and dirt.

Next were my wings. I stayed in my leaned back position and opened them fully on either side of me. Sixteen and a half feet of smoky gray feathers reshuffled in the current, sorting out twigs, leaves, dirt and blood. Then I ran my fingers through my feathers to make sure they were clean.

I got out, flapped my wings a few times to dry them off and squeezed some water out of my hair. Then I pulled an old blanket out of my backpack to cover myself as I gathered my things back up and walked back to my little fire in the clearing.

I refueled the fire with some more sticks and leaves, then hung my clothes on the closest tree branch. (I was not about to let my only set of clothes fall into the fire.) It was only some beat up red running shoes, long blue jeans that were a little baggy, a green long-sleeved t-shirt, a gray windbreaker, and old leather gloves (and of course, underwear, but those will not be described). It wasn't anything special, but it was all I had.

I tried to stay awake long enough for my clothes to dry so I could put them on before hitting the hay, but the warm fire and the soft (well, soft on my standards, which isn't saying much) blanket wrapped around me were just so comfortable, and I j

ust drifted off….

One of the Whitecoats—Carter, I think he's called—walks in wearing a white full-body hazard suit. Tiny, three-year-old me looks up at him, terrified. I know he's here for me. None of the other experiments in my room require hazard suits for their handling.

One of the little girls I share the cage with grunts in her sleep. Her frizzy black hair haloes her face, and her white wings with black speckles shudder and wrap around her and the other little girl. The girl has light brown hair and her name is Max. I know this because she likes to talk. A lot. She says everything that pops into her head. Which tended to earn her a lot of extra bruises. The other little girl—Pop—talks too, but only to me. No one else.

Little me scurries to the back of the cage, behind the girls. Carter clicks the cage open and reaches in. Trying to catch me, he jostles Pop and wakes her up. She sits up and begins silently crying. No three-year-old fit, no tantrum. Sweet, quiet Pop.

Carter finally catches me and begins to drag me out. Pop makes a funny noise and grabs for my ankle. Tiny me yanks away from her. I can't kill her. Not my only friend, sweet little Pop.

But Pop grabs again, and she doesn't miss this time.

I clench my eyes shut and tears stream down my tiny face. It takes me a while to realize that there's no blood on my ankles. Carter has frozen above me. I open my eyes just a crack, and Pop still has a death grip around my ankle. And she's perfectly fine.

Carter recovers from his shock and scoops the both of us up.

The scene changes, and Pop and I are in a black car driven by Carter in the middle of a forest. A small, unkempt house appears at the base of a hill. The car hits a bump, and I hit my head hard on the side of the crate, making Pop cry again. She didn't usually cry a lot, just when I got really badly hurt. She didn't even cry the time a Whitecoat wanted a blood sample and "accidently" cut a huge gash in her arm. Not even when it got infected because everyone "forgot" to give her medical attention.

Since Carter had scooped her up with me, Pop had hugged me tight and refused to let me go. She has her wings wrapped around us and her tiny hand holds mine.

The car pulls to a stop in front of the unkempt house and Carter gets out and slams his door. Then, he comes around the car and opens the passenger side door where mine and Pop's crate sits. He lifts us up, and Pop whimpers. I hug her tighter.

Carter brings us inside the house. Six sets of Eraser eyes stare at me and Pop, and the scene changes again.

This time, Pop and I are seven, and in the same house we'd been in since Carter took us from the School. He hadn't rescued us that night. He'd taken us someplace worse. We were the only experiments there, which meant we were the center of attention at all times. Carter was the only Whitecoat, but he was the worst anyway.

He told us a lot more than the other Whitecoats did. But, as we soon learned, knowledge was a curse, not a blessing.

Carter walks into mine and Pop's room and sits in front of my crate. "I got the results from the test the other day. You know, the one where I took an X-Ray of your brain? Well, it turns out that your brain is so fucked up, that you won't be compatible for another test I wanted to run on you. So, I guess that while Pop takes the test, I'll give you a lobotomy! Doesn't that sound great? Oh, and I'm out of anesthesia, but I'm sure you can suck it up." He smiles warmly.

Suddenly, my crate is jerked sideways, and Pop's pale, dirty face and obsidian black hair is pressed up close to the bars. She pulls on the lock, and bends down to bite it off. When the lock is gone, I spring out of my cage, and see that she's bitten through her lock too. Carter had told us our birthdays, and on Pop's fifth—March 8th, four days after mine—she'd snapped her jaws at an Eraser's reaching hand and bitten three fingers clean off as easily as though they were made of butter.

Carter yanks her away from me. I lunge at him. He was only wearing regular clothes and a lab coat. I guess he wasn't expecting this today. I reach for him, but Pop screams at me not to. She says not to stoop to his level. Killing Erasers is one thing—sometimes you'll only survive if they don't—but killing a weaponless Whitecoat makes you almost as bad them. She makes stupid decisions sometimes, but she only says anything if she feels really strongly about it, so I listen to her. She thrusts out her white wings with black speckles, making him drop her, then knocks him off his feet with a kick to the back of his knees. She kicks him and bites a large chunk out of his shoulder.

Two Erasers bound into the room. They're gone quickly. One down to a few well-placed bites from Pop, the other from a punch to the nose from me. And, you know, melted skin.

We run through the house. Two Erasers guard the front door. One decides it a good idea to punch me in the face and morph at the same time. He gets a good punch in—I feel my nose and maybe cheekbone break—but at the expense of his life as his skin touches mine.

I don't know how we learned to fight so good, but I just go with it.

I turn to see Pop locked in battle with an Eraser. From the wounds on the Eraser's arms, I can tell that Pop has bitten him, but he won't give up. He extends his claws and rakes them across Pop's belly. I scream angrily, and before I know it, the Eraser is on the floor with no skin.

Pop is laying on the floor, hurt really badly. I take off the little tank-top I'm forced to wear and tie it around her middle over her hospital-like gown.

I pick her up and run out. As I run, she looks up at my face weakly.

"Glory…. Glory, your nose is broke. And your cheek." She reaches up and snaps both bones bones back into place, and her skin melts away. I keep running, I can't stop, and her body deteriorates. Soon I am carrying nothing but air….

I woke with a start, drenched in cold sweat. I sit up and breathe heavily. That didn't really happen. I didn't kill her. Not there. Not like that.

The only part of that dream that was fiction was Pop's death. Recently, I'd been having lots of dreams in which I'd killed her in some gruesome way.

Which I did, I guess.

I took me a moment to realize where I am. Then I realized that I was naked. I pulled my clothes off the tree and yanked them back on as fast as possible.

I heard a rustling noise to my left, behind some bushes. Too loud to be something small, like a rabbit or a squirrel, a wolf or coyote would be much quieter, (but not too quiet for my super-human bird-kid ears,) so it had to be something like a bear.

But that was when I heard a human voice.

"Angel, I can think for myself, sweetheart." A girl's voice, maybe around my age.

"Mm-kay Max…." A little girl's voice. But, Max. Like the girl I used to share a cage with at the School. She was in my dream. Weird. "There's a creek close by." She giggles. "Fishes think so funny. Can we go get cleaned up?"

I was so busy listening to their conversation that I didn't think to gather my things and get away. Or hide my wings. When a tall girl with light brown, sun-streaked hair stepped through the tall bushes, I froze up. So did she. Then I noticed the brown, speckled limbs behind her—she had wings too.

This was Maximum Ride. I could tell.

A little girl with pure white wings and curly blonde hair steps out behind her. She froze up too.

Max and who I assumed was Angel were followed by a blond boy who looked like the younger girl and had light brown wings, an African-American girl with wild super-curly dark hair and brown tawny wings, and a boy who also looked around my age wearing all black with shoulder-length black hair and raven black wings. They all froze when they saw me too.

Someone who was lagging behind stepped out of the bushes. He paused, then asked, "What's happnin'."

He looked just like me.

Welp, that's that! Stay tuned for... Well, the second chapter, I guess. ... .