Maximum Ride: The Early Years

Darkness... That's all I remember of my childhood... Did I even have a child hood? It's more like I was born a teenager, I sure was treated that way. My name is Maximum, Max for short, and boy do I have a story to tell. When I was 10 my life would change forever. You know how most kids grow up in a small town with their parents. I'm not most kids. I grew up in a laboratory, and instead of parents, I had some white coated freaks prodding and poking at my wings. Yes I said wings as in fully functional 13 foot from tip-to-tip wings.

You see, weeks after I was born, I was taken from my parents and put into an institute known as "The School" where they attempt the most crazy of experiments. Luckily, I am one of the successful experiments. I am a human-avian hybrid, (Avian Americans for short) and what that means is that I have bird DNA infused into my own giving me both human and bird-like features. (The wings for example.)

Everyday, these white coats do awful experiments on us stretching us like rubber bands that they are TRYING to break. They have us run, fly, then have us chased around by Erasers until we faint. Oh yeah, what's an Eraser. An Eraser is a Lupine-Human Hybrid. So technically, they are wolf humans that are bigger, stronger, and smellier than us. So we have to use our wings to our advantage.

Today was different though, after our breakfast of curdled milk and stale toast, I got loaded into my cart and sent down the hall to a strange room. When I was dropped off of the dolly, I saw that I was not alone. There were five other mutant bird freaks just like me all around the room. There was a two-year-old, Angel, a four-year-old, Gasman (don't ask), a six-year-old, Nudge, and two other ten year olds, Iggy, and Fang.

One of the head honchos, Jeb, was standing in the middle of the room without any of his buddy white coats around. Jeb stood there until we were all silent. The room became quiet and Jeb began to speak.

⌠You are probably wondering what you all are doing here, and I will explain in just a few moments.■ He said locking our crates and stacking them on another dolly.

⌠What▓s happening is, you guys are getting out of here. I have arranged a house to be used thanks to my buddies at the Witness Protection Program. We will live there for the rest of your lives away from this dreaded place. I promise.■ he said covering the dolly with a blanket. That was the last promise I ever took seriously.

We were loaded into a van and driven for what seemed to be days up and down hills, mountains, and any other landform that you could imagine. The trunk opened sending in a blinding stream of light. It had been 65 hours since we had seen sunlight. All of our pit-stops had been in the dead of night to subside any suspicion. Jeb pulled out the crates one by one and dragged them into the house. He unlocked our crates and we all mawkishly crawled out. He showed us to our rooms which all had their own beds. We all went to sleep to regain our energy from the restless drive.

When we awoke the smell of sizzling bacon permeated our nostrils. We climbed lazily out of bed and went into the kitchen.

"Hey Jeb,■ I asked, ⌠What▓s cooking?■ I said sitting in a chair next to Angel.

⌠Bacon, toast, eggs, and orange juice.■ He said shoveling some food atop a plate.

⌠Mmmm, smells good!■ Iggy exclaimed. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you something about Iggy. He▓s blind. The scientist were trying to install bird night vision into his corneas, but something went wrong causing him to be blind for the rest of his life.

For once in my life, it felt as if nothing could go wrong. We were all here. We were all safe. And we were all happy. Until about two years after that morning.

It was a normal day. We woke up to the smell of breakfast cooking and the sound of Jeb TRYING to sing.

⌠Wouldn▓t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn▓t have to wait so long■ he sang with the tone quality of a cat getting neutered. We all sat down around the table and began to eat.

⌠Thanks Jeb■ we all said in unison.

⌠Man, I forgot to get the milk■ he said grabbing his keys from the counter. Those were the last words we heard from Jeb. He left and we haven▓t heard from him yet. Now we have to attempt to get along in this world by ourselves.

That was seven weeks ago. We▓d been getting along fine until November the 15th, a knock on the door would change our lives...

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK! I went to the door to see who was there. I opened the door and there was a white coat right there. Right when I about to close the door he suddenly morphed into an eraser. How'd they find us? That we don't know. The door was halfway shut and he barged in. I called in the rest of the flock. (Cool name huh? Flock) They came in and we started to attack. One-by-one we approached the Eraser. I gave him a nice round-house to the jaw. Fang gave a nice nutcracker to the.. you know... Then Iggy gave the final blow of head lock that broke his neck. The Eraser limped out and from that day on, we were never safe. We had to be careful of everything around us...

THE END