Authors Note: Okay, this is an idea that's been kicking around my head for a while and I thought I'd share it. Please note that the Flock are not in this story yet and probably won't be and I started writing it before the third book. Naturally this means its all AU. Also changes in voice are marked.

Winged kids, Erasers and White Coats are property of James Patterson. My characters and my world is my own.

Dawn of the Earth

The End - Dee

At ten in the morning the world ended.

I knew there was something strange about that day from the beginning. The lack of the Eraser running his gun barrel down the bars of our cages to wake us up was a definite hint. I woke slowly for probably the first time in my life; for once undisturbed by the desperate wailing of an Experiment, one of my friends, being dragged away for 'tests'. The sun shone softly through a tiny window near the ceiling, dancing across my eyes and gently rousing me.

I cracked open an eye and looked around me, 'Maybe today I will wake up outside the lab'. Not a chance; stupid optimism, same old lab, same old nightmare. There were twenty cages rammed up against the wall each containing an extremely grumpy mutant bird kid. That included me by the way. As well as the cage room there were also experimentation rooms. Which I never want to talk about again, so don't ask. There might have been other rooms with cages but I don't know.

I sat up, remembering in time to bow my head to avoid hitting my head on the roof of my cage. Everyone was up already, straining to hear something in the distance. The break room TV I think, but I had never heard it that loud before. I glanced around the lab and saw that everyone was sitting in absolute silence, no one was talking and no one was moving. There wasn't even the gentle tap of passed messages. It was eerie. I tried to listen to what was being said on the TV but was I too far away from the door, which admittedly was usually a blessing.

"What's going on," I tapped across to my neighbour, fourteen year old Jasmine. In the silence it reverberated across the room cutting through the silence like carrion call. Nineteen pairs of eyes glared at me, communicating a silent 'sh!' Sometimes I hate being the youngest; everyone either seems to expect you to know everything, that or know nothing as you're just the silly little girl with downy feathers, which is just as bad.

"The White Coats are stirred up about something," she tapped back. "Now shush Dat's trying to listen."

I shut up and watched Dat who was sitting with his ear pressed against the wall. It was boring; I hate sitting still, and it could go on for hours. I started to tap another message.

Suddenly Dat pulled away from the wall as if it had been electrified. Trust me I know what that looks like. "They're coming." he announced talking normally, for some reason unafraid of being punished. The door banged open and five White Coats came in wheeling trolleys, enough for all of us I noticed.

"…so this is it," one said looking stunned; actually most of them looked stunned. "I'm never going to see them again am I?"

"Pull yourself together, Conner," barked a White Coat that didn't share that same wild-eyed look of disbelief as the others. "We have a job to do."

"It's alright for you," the one called Conner cried back hysterically. "You don't have a family. My son's only four years old for Gods' sake!" Their leader grabbed him and shook him until he the panic faded from his eyes.

"Conner," he said gently. "There is a bunker next to the town; I promise you that they will survive. We will survive."

Conner looked back at him a said weakly. "Promise?"

"Promise. Now let's get these guys out of here." The White Coats rounded on us; some kids quailed back but most just met their panicked eyes, regarding them coldly. They lifted up the cages and placed them roughly on the trolleys. The lead White Coat bent down over Dat's cage and placed something roughly into it.

"Don't lose it." He ordered with harshly, though there was a slight quaver in his voice. The White Coat Conner picked up my cage and looked at me distantly.

"My son's about your age." He said softly, staring at me at me where I couched in my cage looking up in confusion. He went too put me on his trolley but found it was full; he walked over to another and whispered to me. "Just promise me one thing." I didn't say anything but he continued. "Survive." He plunked me down next to Dat who was looking at the object in his cage in disbelief.

"What's that?" I asked, apparently the rules about not talking and not being talked too weren't important any more. "And what's going on."

"They say the world is ending." He murmured still staring at the object. Then he added reverently. "And this is a book." I looked at it in disbelief, looked at the bright cover and golden letters 'Encarta'; I didn't know what to make of it. Books were something the White Coats had; something to jot down notes on how weird we are. They were objects of fear and superstition, not something to give out to helpless mutants.

The White Coats wheeled us out into a huge room known formally as The Atrium or to everyone else as The Bird Cage. It was the one place we were given room to fly; naturally it was my favourite place. The walls were adorned with perches; I spotted the one I had first flown off of. The usual wooden steps had been rammed up against the wall, but something else caught my eye.

It was filled with bird kids.

There must have been a hundred of them. More people than I had ever seen in my life, all milling around next to their miraculously open cages and talking in small groups glancing around suspiciously at the watching White Coats and their Eraser guards.

"Those the last ones?" a White Coat with a clipboard yelled across the room.

"Yep!" The guy in charge of our group called back. "This is all of them."

"Well get them out of those cages we've only got four minutes." He shouted back glancing at his wristwatch. Our White Coat fumbled with the latches on our cages and ushered us out.

I looked around in wonder at the multitudes of bird kids, some standing holding their wings out, some in, some sitting down and other hunched into little feathery balls. It was a cacophony of familiar faces and strangers with unusual wings and strange colours ranging from the standard brown to whites and blacks and even a sky blue. I opened my own wings which were still a soft downy grey; I could feel the anticipation, the excitement, the confusion sweeping though the crowd as new people met new people; all asking the same question.

I glanced around wondering if we were allowed to fly; it was The Bird Cage after all. I could feel the energy of the crowd flowing through me and I was itching to get rid of it. I looked up and gasped. The glass ceiling that let you have a painful glimpse of the world outside was gone and I could see the sky in all its glory. It was bluer than I expected it to be; now that I was seeing it without its usual filter of glass. It was crisscrossed with fine white lines that might have been clouds but not like any clouds that I had ever seen.

"Look!" I cried pointing up at the missing roof. A slow silence spread across the crowd as one by one we craned our heads back and stared at the gap, which should have been the final wall in our prison in disbelief.

"Children," a White Coats voice rang out though the silence, tinny and artificial through the megaphone. I looked round at him; I had never been called a child before, just experiment D148. "You are free." He continued occasionally stumbling over words, as if he had written the speech a long time ago and didn't have time to relearn it. "The world is lost; Even now it ends around us. You have but one job; to live, to thrive, but do not forget the old world. We have put so much into your existence. You're like children to us." A hundred and twenty pairs of eyes regarded him suspiciously, as he calmly walked out. Well I didn't, I looked at him with a mixture of hope and excitement hardly daring to believe what he had said. Was I really free? Free to leave? Free to live? Free to fly?

I didn't think about it, just leapt up and pushed down with my wings and spiralled gently up to the edge of the roof ignoring Dat's desperate cry of "Dee, No!"

I reached the top of the building and kept rising, looking out over a vast forest, feeling the wind and smelling the free air for the first time in my life. I felt a tear of joy form in my eye, it was so beautiful. Below me others brave enough, or stupid enough, also took wing and rose to up join me circling in the pure sky. Then as if by some unseen signal everyone broke, launching into the air in a flurry of feathers and wings and streaming out of the hole in the roof looks of wonder on their faces.

Suddenly there was a huge flash on the horizon ten times brighter than the sun, I shielded my face with my wing and almost fell onto someone. Everyone fluttered around in confusion for a moment but the light didn't come again and no one was hurt. I realised that now I was free I didn't know what to do; we would starve out here with no one to feed us. We were probably all thinking along these lines but then Dat took the reins and cried out across the confused flock.

"Come on; let's get as far away from here as possible. I don't know about you but I'm sick of this place!" He started flying off with a wild laugh heading north, everyone followed without question. Another flash lit up the sky but we didn't pay attention to it, we were free nothing could stop us now.

The flashes kept happening all day and late into the night, but none were near us. Later I learnt that those flashes were atomic bombs. Thousands fell that day. I believe you humans called it

The Armageddon.